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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Laser brain 14:54, 7 February 2011 [1].

Cocker Spaniel

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Cocker Spaniel (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s):   Miyagawa    talk   17:29, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I feel that it may meet the criteria for a FA. It has been through a Peer Review, and I've finally gone through the points raised, however I haven't added the points that I did not agree with (the missing sections mentioned at the bottom of the peer review such as diet). This is meant to be a dog type article, rather than a dog breed article and therefore I haven't included sections such as temperament as these would be covered on the individual breed articles.   Miyagawa    talk   17:29, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose With a quick-look I noticed that it is incomplet. It leaks of some information. Comparing it with the only FA about a dog itself, Beagle, it does not mention its popularity, how it looks, its behaivor, how it is used nowadays, etc., and the most important: the reason of why this article is called "Cocker Spaniel", or in other words, why the dog is called "Cocker Spaniel". On the other hand you talk about its health, why do not talk about the previous points? If you feel that issues are irrelevant, they are not irrelevant for the reader who want to know about this dog. Tbhotch* ۩ ۞ 22:57, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Try looking more slowly.--Dodo bird (talk) 23:19, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't a breed article - it's a breed type article. The main pages for the two breeds are the English Cocker Spaniel and American Cocker Spaniel. I realise now the paragraph on popularity had somehow ended up in the section on the American Cocker, so I've moved it now to the Modern breeds section. The meaning of Cocker is on the third line, and points such as the individual temperaments are covered in the breed articles, as I felt it was irrelevant for them to be in an article regarding the two breeds joint history and comparisons.   Miyagawa    talk   23:35, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As I said was a quick-look changing to neutral for now. Here are some issues:
The article is overlinked
"Kennel Club" and "American/English Cocker Spaniel" are overused, if synoyms exist, use them.
Remove the "" from ALT text because those are not quotes
Fixed.   Miyagawa    talk   10:56, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If I read it correctly, the cocker is an European subject, since they were hunting dogs in the United Kingdom. Shouldn't the article be written in British English?
I was rather torn between International English and British English on this article. Being a Brit myself, it's easier for me to write in British English, but I felt that due to the modern breeds being split between the United States and the United Kingdom that it was more international than British-centric. However, happy to change if the consensus says to do so.   Miyagawa    talk   10:56, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Infobox
ALT needed for consistency.
Done.   Miyagawa    talk   11:43, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lead
Spaniels were... -> Overlinked
In America -> the continent or the US, if it's the second, consider specify it.
Ch. Obo II -> Link it
Both breeds share similar coat colors and health issues with a few exceptions. -> too short for an independent paragraph
Changed American to United States, linked Obo II (article was only created last night!), brought the last line into the end of the second paragraph. Also fixed the wikilink to "Ch. Obo", as it was a link to Championship (dog), which should have been on the Ch. only and not the name of the dog too.   Miyagawa    talk   10:56, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • History
aka -> make it encyclopedic
liver than that of the Sussex Spaniel -> Overliked
Ch. Obo is considered -> [by whom?]
Ch. Obo II is considered -> [by whom?]
He was the son of a Sussex Spaniel and a Field Spaniel. -> overlinked
Fixed the image caption, and removed the overlinking. Wasn't sure how specific the considered had to be so I've put down "dog enthusiasts", if needed I can find additional citations from a range of authors to support this.   Miyagawa    talk   11:21, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Modern breeds
Modern breedssometimes liver and tan as well as a variety -> Modern breedssometimes liver and tan, as well as a variety
the American Cocker Spaniel was ranked 23rd in 2009, -> ranked in what
was originally recognized by The Kennel Club in 1892 -> overlinked
registrations by the American Kennel Club, -> the link must go before
recognized by the American Kennel Club in 1878 -> overlinked
Fixed as suggested.   Miyagawa    talk   11:43, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Common health issues
10 years and four months -> WP:ORDINAL ten years and four months
11 years and 2 months -> As above and consistency.
Otitis externa -> Otitis externa
Malassezia pachydermatitis -> Shouldn't be italized and why it is linked?
between the ages of 3 and 5 -> WP:NUMBERS
Fixed - the link should have been to Malassezia and I'm surprised that it's gone this long before someone's noticed it (past both myself, and through a GA review!)   Miyagawa    talk   11:21, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • References
Both books need thier location.
Added locations to books. Thanks for your comments. :)   Miyagawa    talk   11:52, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Enthusiastic support, but...there's just one thing. The lead says implies that all cockers are either English Cocker Spaniels or American Cocker Spaniels, that the term means one of the two modern breeds, only. And that's pretty much true, today, but what about cocker spaniels that existed at Obo II's time or earlier? They were neither breed, but they were cocker spaniels. Back then, when there were just cocker spaniels, and the two breed had not yet been developed, there were many cocker spaniels, undifferentiated into the two breeds. The article explains this very well; there have historically existed many cocker spaniels that were not American Cocker Spaniels or English Cocker Spaniels, or even Welsh Cocker Spaniels, which refers to a small Welsh Spaniel better suited for going under the bush than springing up because they're smaller. So the lead sentence should be brought into alignment with the concept explained in the article, any small spaniel adapted to that kind of hunting companion work described there. In sum, if the first sentence is true, what was Obo I? Chrisrus (talk) 02:20, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Made an edit to the lead - let me know what you think.   Miyagawa    talk   11:11, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why the capitalisation in the article title? WP:CAPS and WP:Fauna name would have it 'Cocker spaniel' and then in the prose use 'cocker spaniel'. The same would apply for all other dogs/breeds in the article with only capitals on proper names. I cannot see there are any exception for pets and domestic animals. The New York Times calls it 'cocker spaniel' so if we are here to write a high quality encyclopedia why aren't we? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 02:57, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I really need to get around to writing a MOS for the Dog WikiProject. The two existing canine FA's, Beagle and Island Fox capitalise all the words in breed names. In addition, if you have a look around the various dog breed articles I think you'll find that the consensus among those editors is that dog breeds names are fully capitalised (in the absence of a project MOS as needed in Wikipedia:Fauna name#Capitalisation of common names of species). However, nicknames such as "cockers" should be lower-case, and I need to go through the article to check/fix that.   Miyagawa    talk   12:08, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Gone through the article and changed all "cockers" to lower-case. Breed names remain uppercase except for a single instance of "cocker spaniel" where it specifically mentions that it is being used as a term rather than a breed name.   Miyagawa    talk   22:39, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If I'm not mistaken this article is about the breed that includes the American Cocker Spaniel and the English Cocker Spaniel. That would make it a group so even if there was Dog WikiProject agreement to use upper case for dogs Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(fauna)#Capitalisation_of_common_names_of_groups still applies and makes it lower case. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 01:45, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Where it refers to both of the modern breeds, cocker spaniel is now lowercase. Where it refers to the breed known as Cocker Spaniel before it was split into American/English, it is uppercase. Miyagawa (talk) 20:08, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not lowercase in the article title nor in the first sentence. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 13:21, 28 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed in the first sentence (spaniel too), I've left the article uppercase because of the multi-use and I think the uppercase overrides the lowercase usage. Miyagawa (talk) 16:43, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • FA criterion 3 check all images have appropriate licenses. No images used in the article are non-free. All captions are succinct, but there is one issue with caption formatting. As sentence fragments, the captions should not have terminal periods. The links should be removed from the captions as well in a case of WP:OVERLINKing since the terms are linked in the body of the article. Breed names should be dropped to lower case in the captions per the comment above. Imzadi 1979 → 07:41, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • DAB/EL check: No dab links present. One link came up with an error in the link checker tool, but it was fine in my browser. [2]. Imzadi 1979 → 07:46, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed the terminal periods problem, and removed the links.   Miyagawa    talk   12:08, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sources Comments:-

  • "London, England" - the "England" is superfluous
  • Normally books are given a publication year, not a specific date. Where did the dates for the Sucher and Palika books come from?
  • Ref 2: "Archive.org" is not the publisher. The source is a 1909 transcription of the book as published by Chatto and Windus in 1909
  • Ref 3: This can be cited to the Introduction to the Chatto and Windus book rather than to the National Library of Australia website.
  • Don't know why I did that to these two references - I've fixed now with both references going directly to the book itself. I wasn't sure what to abbreviate "Edward, 2nd Duke of York" to, I've put down York for now, but would be happy to hear any further guidance.   Miyagawa    talk   21:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ref 4: The link you give is to a 2008 edition of the book, published by Brewster Press. The "Related books" show a 1936 edition of the title (with only 114 pages), published by Seeley Service. I can't find any mention of a 1932 Scribners edition
  • I'd used this book in the readers room at the British Library, and all I can think of is that I'd written down the wrong thing as the publisher. I think force of habit had me put the google books link in at the time, which I've now removed. Found the Seeley edition for 1932 here.   Miyagawa    talk   22:26, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Refs 4 and 5 (and others): You should give publisher locations for all books, not just those listed under "References". Ref 5 does not require a retrieval date
  • Ref 7: Retrieval date not necessary for a printed source. Dog & Kennel should be italicised per MOS. The date (or year, 2000) of the article should be given
  • Ref 9: Is "Spaniel Journal" available in printed form? If so the points re 7 above apply.
  • Ref 13: What is the nature of this source? How do you access the article mentioned
  • It's a scan made of a piece of period advertising in the American Spaniel Club's collection. I've just edited the article to state that it was "advertised as..." rather than "stated as..." as it was reaching a bit previously imo upon reading it now.   Miyagawa    talk   21:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ref 14: Again, date precision. Publisher location missing, retrieval date redundant
  • Ref 19: Life should be italicised
  • Ref 27: What is the nature of this source - article? book?
  • It's a rather unusual book that I read at the British Library while researching this article, however it didn't have an ISBN number. Also fixed Ref 28 - for some reason I had the publisher down as American Cocker Spaniel, rather than American Kennel Club.   Miyagawa    talk   21:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ref 30: See 14
  • Done - I think I managed to cover all your points, which I have to thank you for, I should have been more thorough in checking the references before nominating here; although at least I'm glad that I don't seem to be making quite so many errors on my more recent articles. :)   Miyagawa    talk   22:34, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Brianboulton (talk) 21:57, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments. The punctuation of the first sentence is awkward: a colon, then a semi-colon, then "and". The bit after the semi-colon can probably go as you make the same point further down in the lead.
  • There's another odd sentence in the lead: "When the breed was brought to the United States, it was bred to a different standard were made which enabled it to specialize in hunting the American Woodcock, creating size and physical shape differences in the breed compared to its English cousin." I tried to edit it, but was worried about changing the meaning.
  • Punctuation needs fixing: "Two dogs are considered to be the foundation sires of both modern breeds, the English variety ..." A colon would work instead of a comma. Not clear what "follows in the footsteps" means in that sentence. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 06:56, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Sorry, I'm going to oppose this time round, for a number of reasons. First, the writing and punctuation could use some improvement. Just a few examples:
  • "When the breed was brought to the United States it was bred to a different standard which enabled it to specialize in hunting the American Woodcock, and caused physical differences compared to its English cousin." Presumably it was the physical differences that did the enabling, and were the point of the different breeding, so it's not clear what "and" would mean in this sentence. It would also help to explain why different characteristics were needed to hunt the American woodcock. Just because a bird is a little smaller, why would that require a smaller dog to hunt it?
  • "While its initial origins are unknown ...": origin or origins is enough.
  • "In 1801, Sydenham Edwards wrote in Cynographia Britannica that the 'Land Spaniel' is divided into two types; the hawking, springing/springer and the cocking/cocker spaniel." That should be a colon, not semi-colon.
I'm also wondering about the relationship between this article, English Cocker Spaniel and American Cocker Spaniel. This one doesn't seem comprehensive (just over 2,000 words), but when another reviewer mentioned this, they were referred to one of the sub-articles, so it's not clear what the purpose of this page is. That makes it hard to know what's expected of it to get it to FA. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 00:32, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I guess the easiest way to explain it (and I'm not a biologist by any means, so apologies if I'm using the wrong terms) but you can think of a Cocker Spaniel to be effectively a genus, where English Cocker Spaniel and American Cocker Spaniel are considered the species, and Spaniel is the Family (with Dog as the Order). I know that's not how it's actually set out (Dog is a species), but I thought explaining it like that might make it easier to compare to other FAs. For instance, Delichon is a genus, with Common House Martin, Asian House Martin and Nepal House Martin as the species. So effectively this article is trying to be the Delichon article in this instance - although you'll have to take into account the differences between whats normally in a domestic animal article and a wild animal article.   Miyagawa    talk   12:48, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments –

  • Is there a standard used here for when to capitalize Cocker and Spaniel, and when not to? I see a lot of variation in this regard throughout.
  • When referring to a breed, it should be capitalised. When used as a common group term, it's not. You've also got to take into account that prior to the English/American split, it was simply Cocker Spaniel as a breed name, becoming the group name after the split. Miyagawa (talk) 13:05, 28 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • No need for two standard links in the lead.
  • History: Woodcock should be plural, I believe.
  • "as being deeper a shade of liver than that of the Sussex Spaniel." Move "a" to before "deeper"?
  • Add a comma directly after the first mention of Obo II in this section.
  • Modern breeds: Add "the" before "23rd most popular breed"?
  • Another case of overlinking is seen in English Cocker Spaniel with show and dog show, both of which go to the same article.
  • Common health issues: There's some inconsistent number usage in the first sentence. If the first three numbers are spelled out, the 2 should be as well.

Images all are properly licensed, although the WP:MOS would suggest that images with faces should look into the text Fasach Nua (talk) 17:30, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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