Talk:Chester Rows

Chester Rows has been listed as one of the Art and architecture good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
August 11, 2009	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on July 21, 2009.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that one theory suggests that the unique Chester Rows (pictured) were constructed in the medieval era on top of debris from the ruins of Roman buildings?

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GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Chester Rows/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Starting review.Pyrotec (talk) 19:31, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Initial comments[edit]

A well-constructed, well-referenced and well-illustrated article. Prose, references and illustrations appear to be at GA-level.

Medieval period - I don't have access to a copy of Ward, does ref 8 cover the whole of this paragraph, I presume it does? DonePyrotec (talk) 19:51, 31 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Origins -

The second para is well referenced. However, it was not clear to me what the significance of the sentence: "The Roman fortress at Chester was unusually large being 60 acres (240,000 m2) in size, while most legionary fortresses were about 50 acres (200,000 m2).[12]" was. Then, having checked the references, ref 3 explains that: "Chester was founded as the legionary fortress of Deva, and the lay-out and subsequent development of the city was heavily influenced by the grid pattern of the original Roman street plan." I would suggest that this point needs to be clarified for readers, such as myself, who are not familiar with Chester.

Scope -

The article describes the Rows, provides information on their (possible) creation, subsequent development, and use today. It ends on: "Chester Rows are a major tourist attraction in the city because of their unique nature, their attractive appearance, and the covered shopping experience they provide". Which is good, but I need to consider whether the scope of the article is adequate.

There is no information provided on statutary protection, listed building status, ancient building status, etc.

The Bridge Street photograph appears to show "traffic calming measures", whilst the Three Old Arches does not - there is a taxi rank outside. I accept that this is an article about buildings and walkways, but as the potential tourist (I've never been to Chester) the article fails to provide any information about what is happening at street level. Well, other than there are stone undercrofts and shops, some slightly below street level.

Pyrotec (talk) 21:39, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response

Medieval period. The ref does include the whole paragraph.
Origins. I should like to be able to answer the question "Why are there rows in Chester and nowhere else?" but as yet have been unable to do so. I think I was playing with the argument that a possible reason was that the fortress was the largest Roman fortress in Britain, and it therefore had more debris ...; but I cannot find that argument elsewhere and so could not use it explicitly. So the sentence about the size of the fortress serves no purpose and will be deleted.

I came across ref 3 rather late in the writing process and probably need to use more of it to clarify the paragraph; this will be rewritten.

Scope. I found this the most difficult subject to deal with, mainly because I could not find reliable good-enough sources. I could tell you all about the present state - shops, offices, restaurants, etc - but that would be from my own knowledge, which is not acceptable. A search of Pastscape using "row Chester" here gets 21 hits for National Monuments, 14 of which are buildings in Chester incorporating rows; I presume I could use this. A search on Images of England using "row/Chester/Cheshire" gives 170 hits. I did a quick survey of these; 94 of the buildings containing rows are listed buildings, 9 at Grade I, 20 at Grade II* and 65 at Grade II. But this is really OR and I feel I cannot use it; and I have not found a source saying something like "a very high proportion of the buildings containing rows are listed (all of them?) and 9 are Grade I". Not sure what to do about this.

But I have found a source about the pedestrianisation here which I can use.

I don't think it's genuinely original research if all you're doing is counting. If you added in some analysis of the stats that would count as OR, but I don't think working out a couple of numbers and presenting them to the reader counts. It might be problematic to source though as I don't think it's possible to link to a search (doesn't the link expire?) Nev1 (talk) 17:22, 31 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I will alert you when I have done what I can of the above. Do you have any suggestions on how to use the Pastscape and Images of Britain evidence? Peter I. Vardy (talk) 15:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The English Heritage websites Images of England and Pastscape are both reliable sources. Another possibility is the Victoria County History; some of the Cheshire ones are here: [1]. Sorry, I don't have any Cheshire-related books on my shelves, so I can't help with 'books to hand'.Pyrotec (talk) 20:04, 31 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've added material to extend the scope which I hope is now adequate. Peter I. Vardy (talk) 20:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update. I think that you have (more than) covered the points that I made above. I'm just going to read through the article from Description to the end and then the WP:lead just to statisfy myself that it is GA-complaint. Pyrotec (talk) 21:05, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Summary[edit]

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose quality:

B. MoS compliance:
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. References to sources:

B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

C. No original research:
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects:

B. Focused:
Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias:
Is it stable?
No edit wars, etc:
Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
Overall:
Pass or Fail:

Congratulations on the quality of the article. I'm awarding GA-status.Pyrotec (talk) 21:25, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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