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History of Portugal (1578-1777)

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It pretty good by now. Just want to known what to improve now. Gameiro 16:54, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. This is for featured article candidates, you should nominate this article for Peer review if you want suggestions/comments. I will do a quick review anyway: it needs a copy-edit, inline citations with footnotes and there are also several links to non-existant articles. It is very close, but not quite there yet. — Wackymacs 17:12, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. It could really do with a less awkward title. Ambi 01:30, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Like what? History of Portugal (1640–1755)? This would be consistent with featured articles like History of Poland (1945–1989), though I think some people might object to having all history articles be consistent with all other history articles, rather than just worrying about making history articles consistent with all articles of the same series (i.e. as long as all Portugal history articles are the same style...). It would help shorten and simplify the article title greatly, though... Actually, yeah, I support changing the History of Portugal articles to those names. It's too much trouble to mention the events which occurred in the years that are used as benchmarks, plus those events have their own articles anyway. Really, looking over the whole "History of Portugal" articles, I notice a heck of a lot of inconsistencies and bizarre changes in style (from timeline to general Spanish history to stub article to weird digression, and so on...) -Silence 05:47, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think anyone who doesn't know when the Restoration occured in Portugal will be confused by the title (like myself before I read the article). -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 19:49, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The names of the majority of Portuguese historic periods articles are now simplified to History of Portugal (year-year). I'm working now with the inline citations. Thanks for the tips. Gameiro 23:01, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Remember also to change the Template:History of Portugal to correspond to the changes in the names of the articles to which the Template refers. Hydriotaphia 12:44, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment A lot of double redirects have been created by the page moves. These all need to be fixed. --Martyman-(talk) 21:25, 28 November 2005 (UTC) All double redirects have now been fixed, but every article that links to this one now goes through a redirect page. Idealy these should all be direct links. --Martyman-(talk) 22:51, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Double redirects corrected. Thanks. Gameiro 23:09, 29 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
My sense is that it's an indication, sub silentio, that the article needs a good deal more work. Hydriotaphia 13:01, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Improvements needed:
    • awkward title
    • proper referencing
    • inline citations
    • copyedit
    • red links (I'm working on them)

anything else? Gameiro 21:38, 30 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Conditional Conditional Support Comment: It seems really good, especially if you want to know all about Portugal, 1640-1777, but I haven't finished reading it yet... I'm curious to know how it was written. The article appeared a couple of weeks ago almost fully formed, so I'm wondering whether it was composed offline for Wikipedia, or moved from another article, or what? I'm not implying anything at all, just curious! (Also, aren't the references supposed to be to English-language sources?) --Tsavage 23:56, 30 November 2005 (UTC) (New vote comment: I changed to Conditional support, subject to a quick clean-up of a few typos, and straightening out of some sentences. I will help with this if I get a chance, and there isn't much that I can see. Beyond that, from my week or two's FAC experience, I realize that it is impractical and not the practice to literally vet an FAC against all of the criteria to the best of one's abilities. If my livelihood or my life depended on my accuracy, I would certainly check any article I commented on much more rigorously than I do here. With that, and my lack of any particular background in History or Portugal, as givens, I think this article reads well, interestingly, in fact, and seems to cover its topic in detail, and be well-illustrated and complete. No flags pop, no alarm bells go off, so I can't not explicitly support along the general lines of the FAC criteria, provided the relatively minor cleanup is done. An issue is the non-English citations, however, on this one, I'm just going with what's there in English, which may not seem sufficient to some -- that can be taken into account in the consensus evaluation. (I'm curious as to why there are so few comments on this one...) --Tsavage 18:03, 2 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]
The rewrite of the lead is good. I checked for typos since I'd noted 'em before and it seems fine. And this is an interesting article... For these and above reasons, I've amended by vote to "support". --Tsavage 19:35, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
My conversion of Conditional to plain Support was premature. I'm back to the original Conditional opinion, subject to some copyediting. I don't think there is inconsistency in any of my reasons, but I assumed a greater level of copyediting than I finally read for after the many previous rereads and bits and pieces of revision. (You may want to note my comment, on Monicasdude's objection below, regarding amount of revisions in FACs)... --Tsavage 18:50, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the comment. I had been writing the majority of the article in Word for some weeks using mostly my knowledge, some websites and concise history books in Portuguese. For the earthquake, the Távora's affair and the Jesuits expulsion I selected bits of articles on Wikipedia and made small corrections. Then I used a timeline (Mattoso Vol. VIII) and corrected dates and places. I'm doing the same now for History of Portugal (1777-1834). As for the references, I've used Portuguese language books and English language websites. I don't know if only English language books are supposed to be referenced. Anyone knows? Gameiro 01:33, 1 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • This one is interesting. I guess I'll go with a weak object since this article does not have many inline citations, and because it uses references written in a foreign language. Normally I like to see a note or two per paragraph, and I especially like inline citations at the end of paragraphs, since they suggest that the material in the paragraph is covered in that reference. As for the languages of the references, I'm not trying to be difficult, but since there are likely many English language books covering Portuguese history, I think English references should be used as much as possible. --Spangineeres (háblame) 06:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I hate to be a downer, but if I were a student of portuguese history, I'd have a terrible time trying to excise sources out of this article. There are 11 inline citations, most of which are bunched together, and none of which having page numbers. There are huge portions of text with no apparent corresponding citation. And why on earth are we using Encarta as a reference? I'm afraid that I must fully object now. For some reason I had a better impression of the article's incline citations when I first posted here. --Spangineeres (háblame) 22:58, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment can't make head nor tail of the first sentence. It reads "The History of Portugal from the 1640 Restoration to the end of the the Marquis of Pombal's regime in 1777 is a transitional 115 year period between the height of the Portuguese Empire and influence in the world that characterized the two previous centuries, and the decline of the Empire that culminated with the 1755 Lisbon earthquake" - Ta bu shi da yu 06:45, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Oppose:I like this page very much, its almost a new fact every second. Which is just how an encyclopedia article should be. However, I do feel it needs to be tightened up, a lot of words seem to be used when justa few would do, for example: "....a beloved monarch, patron of music and arts and a proficient writer on musical subjects. He was also a considerably sophisticated composer" - I may be wrong but for a start I think mucic is already one of the arts, whatever there seems to be a convoluted way of saying he was "into" music. The page need s to be very sympathetically copyedited, whoever wrote it knows their facts, but the copy editor need to be someone who has not worked on it, so has to work out what the article is trying to say with fresh eyes. I note the article is well referenced, I don't think non controversial accepted historical facts need to be footnoted so long as they are in the references. New ideas (if there are any - I don't know) do need (IMO) to be footnoted and attributed etc. Regarding the title, I see it has been "History of Portugal 1640 - 1777" , that was pretty good! I hope to change my vote very soon. A very well researched article. Regarding Tsavage's above point "....references supposed to be to English-language sources?" I don't think wikipedia should allow itself to be limted in this way. There are many great reference books other than those written in English. Are the great FAs of the other language wikipedias not to be translated because they used native references? Giano | talk 12:13, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: re: non-English sources. I agree with you. I mentioned it (in a mildly dissenting way) Because I'm trying to be thorough on the FAC points I cover... The position on no-English sources seems to be not quite clearly stated as official policy: WP:Verifiability#Sources in languages other than English. (I find that the NOR+NPOV+Verifiability formula makes sense in principle, but in practice, the actual rules push towards a certain kind of (quasi-, pseudo-) academic style, with the citations and whatnot, that's a...little odd and out of synch with much of the material and activity... Of course, that's all part of the FUN! ;) --Tsavage 19:48, 8 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. Prose needs a very extensive copyedit. "A revolt led by prominent figures as well as military officers failed and Royal courts sentenced most of the conspirators to prison or exile. This situation was aggravated when the Napoleonic Wars started." "With the transfer of the Royal court to Rio de Janeiro, the tense situation was attenuated". "Joseph I was shot in an arm". "In the 1720s, the rush suffered another stimulus". Monicasdude 16:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • re Prose needs a very extensive copyedit. I spent some time on this, followed it through fairly extensive edits (which "shouldn't" be part of FAC), and gone from Comment, to Conditional Support, to Support, back to Conditional Support, and based in part on the specifics mentioned in this objection. So, I feel obliged to comment on this:
I agree that the article could use copyediting, but very extensive seems to be an exaggeration I skimmed the article just now, and it does continue to have some awkward stuff, which makes for a valid FAC objection (as in, not great writing), period. But, "very extensive"? "Writing style" isn't a clear cut situation, FAC isn't, Wikipedia isn't, and IF procedural tactics (such as overemphasis) are used to add weight to the reasons for an objection, thereby making a consensus decision harder to evaluate if that objection remains, that simply messes up the practical process. I'm not saying that's the case here, however, I don't believe there are very many instances left. The objection should detail what exactly the "copyedit" refers to, that term is a pretty clear reference to mechanics, but it still involves the larger issue of writing style, and an argument against can almost always be made based on style. (Meanwhile, I have once again changed my vote, to conditional support, on exactly its original conditional basis: "subject to a quick clean-up of a few typos, and straightening out of some sentences".)
This objection highlights how unwieldy and plain difficult the current FAC-as-article improvement approach is. Does one hang back and only read a nomination near the FAC deadline? (I've begun to do that, which is unfortunate, it renders a FAC proceeding hard to follow, therefore, difficult to participate in and to use as a future guideline.) Or does one only check articles with lots of initial support (suspecting overly-friendly votes, or believing that it's really hard to meet "FA standards")? Should one meticulously reread an article multiple times to get the full sense of each significant set of revisions, or not vote in the first place if not always willing or able to go over it again and again over a period of up to a couple of weeks?
Really, an article shouldn't make it to FA status with a single awkward sentence, by a reasonable interpretation of the rules that says, all else being OK, it should "read properly" from beginning to end. At the same time, the goal of FA is to recognize quality and improve standards, and the application of that is...active improvement of FACs-in-process. Monicasdude's objection is necessary and valid, but extremely annoying for its timing and lack of attempt at self-resolution. Annoying isn't wrong or a necessarily a bad thing, but here, it is UNHELPFUL. I will go through the current version thoroughly, once again (though I must admit, I am growing much less inclined to do anything but vigorously object on very narrow and specific grounds and for certain nominations only, which may not be the overall intended spirit of FAC...). Again, my issue here is with the current process... Sheesh... ;) --Tsavage 18:37, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I was going to make corrections, which after a pretty thorough reading, I'd guess involves a maybe 15-20 areas, mostly a word or two (like "Joseph was shot in an/the arm", but 20, even for the length of the article, is a lot. At that point, it would be smoothly readable, no ambiguous or confusing or awkward bits, not "brilliant" by any stretch, but gets the job done. I would've hoped it had been taken care of in the interim. I'd do it, since I did get involved on the support side, but, looking at the nom date (Nov. 26), this article has been around for nearly three weeks, and that's also...unrealistic. So, I'm letting my conditional stand. The arbiter of consensus can duly note the conditions, etc, etc. I will further revise my approach to support. --Tsavage 03:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for whatever problems my timing may have created, but . . . I didn't take much of a look at this article before, because the negative comments looked like this had very little chance of being promoted, and my comments would just have repeated what others had already said. I said "very extensive" because I see clunky, if not outright defective, prose in most paragraphs, and an inconsistent set of citation forms. I'm reluctant to do a major copyedit on an article when I know so little about the underlying subject matter (and especially when I have trouble keeping track of who's who in the events.)
I strongly agree with you about the FAC process and articles that are subject to major revisions. It would probably be better if candidacies of articles which could not gain consensus support without major revisions were rejected quickly, rather than lingering through multiple versions of the article. Monicasdude 19:40, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
As I said, you were "right" to object. I won't go into my personal process on this one (well...nah); I will continue to revise my approach to FAC support... Thanks for the reply! --Tsavage 03:07, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
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