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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 promoted by Karanacs 22:23, 27 September 2011 [1].

Fairfax Harrison

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Fairfax Harrison (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Ealdgyth - Talk 03:02, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because... I promised everyone something other than a bishop or a horse. So ... I present to you, an American lawyer, railroad executive, and historical writer. (See if you can figure out WHY I wrote about him?) He's probably best known now for his writings, but in his day he was very influential in business and industry. After the usual copyedit by Malleus, I present to you a American personage for a change... Ealdgyth - Talk 03:02, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - no spotchecks, but the only issue I see is an inconsistency in volume notation between the first and last references. I also tweaked the columning. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:56, 3 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments. The prose looks good. Two content and two stylistic queries -
  • The article mentions his brother Francis, but there was also at least one other brother, Archibald, per the Yale obituary. (Not a very major figure, admittedly.)
  • "His election was considered to be a sign of change in the Southern United States, especially in its railroads." - why was it a change? Was it viewed as the next generation taking over, or was it because he was himself a southerner?
  • Distances are sometimes converted as (xxx-kilometer) and sometimes as (xxx km).
  • Finally, I'm not sure there's much benefit from providing modern dollar values for stock price and dividends. Giving an explicit percentage for dividends would be useful, if you can track down the share values to calculate from (the 1928 one looks like ~5.5%, which is a bit over average for the period), but for stock prices you may as well leave them be. As stock represents an arbitrary unit of indeterminate size, the values are only really relevant in comparison to earlier or later ones of the same stock, rather than as real dollar amounts - providing a conversion adds twice as many numbers to the sentence but doesn't really add much meaning.
I'll go over it again tomorrow and see if there's anything that sticks out on a second reading. Shimgray | talk | 21:30, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've fixed the "kilometer" (yuk!) issue. Malleus Fatuorum 23:08, 9 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It'll be tomorrow morning at the earliest before I'm able to get to these... more likely tomorrow evening. Today was a very long day at a street festival... hopefully tomorrow will not be as draining... Ealdgyth - Talk 01:38, 10 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've added "Another brother was Archibald, and all three brothers attended Yale University." to deal with the first point. The second has been clarified a bit. The third, Malleus got. On the fourth - I'm inclined to leave them in because if I don't, I'm likely to get someone who insists that they be included... whether or not they make a lot of sense. Sometimes it's easier to just not fight... Ealdgyth - Talk 13:40, 11 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good. Archibald's biography is also on the Yale obituaries, FWIW. Regarding values, I think I'm marginally against them simply because so many figures makes me glaze over when I read the sentence, but I know exactly what you mean about it being easier to keep them! I sometimes wonder if anyone would notice were the inflation template replaced with a random-digit generator... Shimgray | talk | 21:46, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm utterly unlikely to do Archibald's biography - it was enough of a stretch for me to do someone from past the 15th century and on the wrong side of the pond from my usual subjects (except horses). Fairfax is important to me because of his work on Thoroughbred bloodlines - he was one of the giants there - and it is unlikely I'd ever tackle a plain old American (grins). Ealdgyth - Talk 22:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support per the above, on prose quality and comprehensiveness. Shimgray | talk | 22:02, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I was wondering if there was anything that could be added into the article itself about his pen-name (A Virginia Farmer) as this appears in the infobox but isn't mentioned at all subsequently (if I'm not mistaken). Also, is there a reason that the on-line references don't have accessdate parameters while the external links do? Finally, "Time Magazine Staff" (ref 19, et seq), no reason for Staff to be capitalised is there (same for all other "staff" authors)? Finally, is Master of Arts (postgraduate) a better link than the "earning a Masters in Arts" you currently have? In either case, I suspect it should be Master's... The Rambling Man (talk) 16:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've run into nothing that says why he used that pen name (and I've done pretty extensive google scholar searches for information on him...) He used it, but that is pretty much all that we know. The online references do have accessdates, when they are listed in the references section, just not in the citation section. I generally see "Staff" in capitals in most of the references I see that are similar, especially in American referencing. If you feel really strongly about it, I could change it... Ealdgyth - Talk 16:50, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's not a big issue, the one source I looked at (ref 19) had no mention of who authored it at all, and I've always been led to believe that "Staff" isn't a proper noun, that's why I mentioned it. And forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but I don't see ref 2 (the Obit) in your references section, it has no accessdate in the refs section. As far as the pen-name goes, is this something common in this kind of biography? As the infobox is part of the lead, I wondered if we would expect to see it at least mentioned in passing in the article, or expanded upon. It may be clear that I don't know what I'm talking about, but it's really just an innocent question! The Rambling Man (talk) 16:59, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
the obit is the very last reference in the reference section ... "Yale University". I didn't mention the pen name in the article because it was only mentioned in passing in the one source - since it was so little noticed, I didn't feel it needed a huge amount of mention in the article - felt to me like the infobox was sufficient. As for the "Google Books Staff", I just generally see it in capitals when I see such a construction in the works I consult. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:03, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, now I do feel stupid. ref 2 has an external link which I couldn't see directly replicated in the refs. Turns out that on Safari, that link is in its own column on the right-hand side, making the whole article twice the width... I do apologise. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:09, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No worries at all.. sometimes I can search the house for a pencil and find it behind my ear, so ... is the "Staff" issue something you desparately want changed? I'm not hard-core enough about it to fight it ... Ealdgyth - Talk 17:13, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm curious as to why that last ref is miles right in Safari, very unusual. And well, it depends on whether you think a "staff writer" really should be credited as "Staff Writer", I'm not sure at all. But I have seen it all over FACs, so maybe I'm speaking out of turn... The Rambling Man (talk) 17:21, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Removing the "60em" from the ref list has fixed the appearance for me. Was there a real need for it for other non-Safari viewers? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:39, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, to break it into columns. I use Safari and was not having the issue you were describing. Try the new setting for me? Ealdgyth - Talk 20:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, doesn't work, same problem. I'm using a 3-year-old Macbook under Lion, Safari 5.1. Not using columns worked fine... The Rambling Man (talk) 21:11, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm really not inclined to not have columns because of occasional glitches - I'm using Safari 5.1 also, and no issues at all with the columing. Perhaps raise the issue at the reflist template page? Anyway, what is your thought on the Staff/staff issue? Ealdgyth - Talk 21:20, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not having columns causes glitches? How so? And no, if you insist (along with most of the rest of the FAC community, it appears!) that "staff writer" is a proper noun, then so be it, consensus rules, after all. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:24, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Let me rephrase .. I am not inclined to remove the columns because of occasional glitches for some users on specific platforms when those are probably solvable through the template itself. The lack of columns leaves a lot of wasted space on the article which I find aesthetically unpleasing... (I know I didn't make much sense with my first try, sorry!). I'm not sure there is a consensus on Staff/staff at FAC, I've never had it discussed, and if you want it changed, I'll change it.. (grins) Ealdgyth - Talk 21:28, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, well I'll just assume my dirty Macbook is causing the glitch so keep the columns, but I still think staff writers aren't "proper nouns" so decap them. (double grins..) The Rambling Man (talk) 21:30, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(sets a new record on the number of colons) Done! Ealdgyth - Talk 21:36, 24 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • Caption on lead image could use a comma
  • Map is fairly unreadable at present size - could it be slightly larger?
  • File:Fairfax-harrison-1913.jpg uses an obsolete licensing tag
  • File:Southern_RR_Locomotive_LOC_npcc_32807.jpg: given the information given in the Date field, that licensing tag may be incorrect. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:01, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Added comma, increased size on the map to 400px, although it's pretty small still. I removed the obsolete tag (the other tag is still current so it's fine), and replaced the last image with a modern properly licensed image of the paint scheme. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:16, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Great, everything looks good now. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:24, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: a few late observations:-

  • I believe it is accepted that in featured biographies the subject's full birth and death dates are given in the opening sentence, not just the years. I have checked about 25 and they all give the full dates.
  • In the lead we have "secretary to the Confederate President" and in the Background section, "secretary for..." I think the former is correct.
  • In the map of the Southern Railway's routes in 1921, I assume that it is the bolded lines that indicate the routes, not all the lines. This should be stated in the caption.

That's all . Brianboulton (talk) 20:12, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I got all of these (although I really prefer just year dates in the lead ...) Ealdgyth - Talk 20:17, 27 September 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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