Jump to content

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Death and funeral of Margaret Thatcher/archive1

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 07:25, 16 April 2017 [1].

Death and funeral of Margaret Thatcher

[edit]
Nominator(s): --Nevé–selbert 16:00, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about the death of the most controversial and consequential public figure in recent British history. I would like to think that the article's quality has improved in recent months, reference formatting is first-rate and the thumbnails neatly fit in with much of the text. The article contains a fair amount of both praise and criticism of its subject, thus comfortably conforming to WP:NPOV standards. Currently WP:CCLASS, it has indeed undergone various c/e improvements since that assessment. --Nevé–selbert 16:00, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is a dead link in the references (no 50)
Several of the references are missing accessdates.
Keith D (talk) 23:17, 12 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Brianboulton

[edit]

I appreciate the amount of work that has gone into the development of this article. However, my immediate impression is that the lead is inadequate. It does not properly summarise the article, inter alia making almost no reference to the "reactions" which comprise around two-thirds of the full text. Also there is some clumsy writing, for example:

  • "Her funeral was held on 17 April 2013, and held the status of a ceremonial funeral, the first since the funeral of the Queen Mother." The word "funeral" appears three times in this short sentence.
  • "Due to the polarised view of her achievements and legacy, the reception to her death was mixed, and included street parties." This is clumsy, and as indicated above is a wholly inadequate summary of the Reactions sections of the article.
  • "Notable attendees included all four of the living Prime Ministers (and future prime minister Theresa May) and their wives, the Queen, Brian Mulroney, F. W. de Klerk, other foreign dignitaries, and all government ministers."
  • Inconsistency in capitalisation ("Prime Ministers" and "prime minister").
  • I'm not a royalist, but it is surely general practice for HM to head a list of "dignitaries", rather than being chucked in with also-rans such as Mulroney.
  • Why, incidentally, is Mulroney's presence thought worthy of specific mention in the lead, or that of De Klerk? As far as I can see, neither is mentioned in the main text.
  • The parenthetical reference to Theresa May is trivia rather than a key fact.
  • "all government ministers" is very vague. You should at least specify British government ministers, and also whether you mean cabinet ministers or the whole shooting match of junior office-holders in the Cameron administration, most of whom were anonymous figures who certainly don't warrant the description of "notable attendees".
  • We don't normally refer to ashes as being "buried".

Rather than tinkering, the whole lead needs a substantial rewrite and expansion to meet the requirements of WP:LEAD. I have not read in detail beyond this point, but will attempt to do so soon and add further comments in due course. Brianboulton (talk) 09:44, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Nominator: Please ping me when you are ready to respond. I am not always online but I check in fairly regularly. Brianboulton (talk) 12:45, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Brianboulton: I understand what you're saying, thanks for commenting. I agree that the lede is inadequate, and I've tagged the article accordingly. Thinking about it, it was wrong of me to come here and nominate this article to be featured; it would have been wiser of me to have nominated this article for WP:BCLASS status. Had I considered all the options at the time, I wouldn't have decided to rashly resort here. My bad. Your points are entirely within reason and thanks again for taking the time. Red X I withdraw my nomination .--Nevé–selbert 10:40, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
This is probably the wisest step at this point. Brianboulton (talk) 15:20, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Death_and_funeral_of_Margaret_Thatcher/archive1&oldid=775767612"