Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Dürer's Rhinoceros

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Dürer's Rhinoceros[edit]

I hope I have remembered how to do this... Anyway, for your general edification, this is an article on the stunning and very well known, if inaccurate, image created by Albrecht Dürer in 1515, of the first rhinoceros seen in Europe for over a millennium.

This was a WP:DYK a month ago, originally my rough machine-assisted translation of part of a page from the French Wikipedia but now supplemented and expanded substantially, with the help of some comments on its peer review and talk page. All comments and ideas welcome. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:33, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What date did the rhinoceros drown? We have the date it was viewed by the French king, but not the date the ship sank. Or is this not known with certainty?Everyking 07:46, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I am aware, the date when the ship carrying the rhinoceros sank is not known with any certainty, but presumably late January or early February 1516. I have not see a precise date in any of the references, whereas the sources do give the date of the meeting with the French king off Marseilles, presumably because contemporary documenary sources record the meeting but not the shipwreck. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:51, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. A lovely page. Very interesting and well written, an asset the encyclopedia. Giano | talk 17:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with a small twisted horn on top! Fantastic work by ALoan. For a static subject — an image — this article has a surprisingly strong narrative movement and flow — a forward-moving story which is absolutely unputdownable. Beautifully illustrated and executed in every way. Bishonen | talk 22:44, 1 September 2006 (UTC).[reply]
  • Support for this article, by far the most encouraging ingredient of Wikipedia that I've seen in a week, if not a month. -- Hoary 06:09, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Engraved support. The article was a delight. Sabine's Sunbird talk 06:17, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Good stuff. Sandy 15:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I don't normally venture into FAC, but I'm supporting two articles today. I picked this up at random in peer review and found very little that could be improved. It is one of the best articles I've seen on Wikipedia - engaging, beautifully written and well illustrated. Yomanganitalk 23:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. I can only see one problem with this article -- the footnotes are not numbered properly in the section Dürer's woodcut. Once this problem has been addressed, I'll change to support. Change to support. Please note that I was not trying to hold up a FA in order to make a point -- I said I don't want to attempt to hold up the fac in order to make a point. This wonderful article should be featured; the reference policy should be changed. (Interesting about this style being used in some medical sources -- as my background is more in the humanities, I was entirely unaware of that)--Zantastik talk 23:50, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Do you mean the way the footnote numbers in text go [14] then [15] then [6]? As much as I personally dislike it, it's a commonly-used, largely-approved style on Wikipedia now: the [6] is a re-use of a footnote citation already used before. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 23:55, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • That's exactly what I mean. Whether we allow it here or not, it's bad style and I doubt that it's used by any academic works. I don't want to attempt to hold up the fac in order to make a point, but it's simply pitiful style, and nearly any careful reader would see it as being an error. --Zantastik talk 01:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • How is it an error when it's going back to a source used previously? This isn't grounds to object. This style of referencing is currently the most widely accepted version on Wikipedia. Personal disfavor for that style is not a valid reason to hold up an FAC. FAC is the last place to use WP:POINT. It's a grave disrespect to the editors who have put their work into an article. Such an offense for the sake of an individual's personal tastes or agenda isn't worth it. Ryu Kaze 01:40, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I agree, this objection is invalid. The concensus that this style is one of several acceptable options is clear. But Ryu, don't be so combative, please. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:15, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I don't like the style at all myself, but I believe that I have previously seen it, or something very much like it, in at least one academic journal in medicine or the natural sciences. It's well suited to those areas, because typically references there are to the findings of (rather than to interesting bits within) short research papers: there's seldom much point in, say, referring specifically to p.351 within an article running pp.350–353. This in turn means that repeated references to the same paper won't bring up the awkward matter of page numbers; whereas in WP articles on history, aesthetics, linguistics, etc., one is often forced to make a choice between (a) suppressing page numbers (awkward for the person wanting to follow up a note) and (b) having full notes (with duplication of bibliographic trivia) for each page number that's referenced (ugly and ridiculous). End of minisermon. -- Hoary 04:19, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm sorry, but this is an artefact of the <ref> footnote system. There is not much I can do about it, short of moving to another footnote system, and that I something I would rather not do (I am familiar with this style of footnotes from scientific journal articles). -- ALoan (Talk) 08:58, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. It's a beautiful article. I love the way it takes an object and its referent, and uses them as a lens through which to see a broader slice of history. ALoan and friends have done it again. (As required, I should disclose that I contributed to the article—in a relatively minor way.) Tony 12:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Very nice article. -- ChrisO 13:44, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I wonder if I could bother ALoan to look at this discussion on the page that began as Michelangelo's David but was changed to David (Michelangelo) by another user, acting on the suggestion that I put forward there. If the title of this article were to be like every other one on a work of art then it would be The Rhinoceros (Dürer); it seems more encyclopaedic to me, my rationale here being that the image would never be referred to as Dürer's Rhinoceros in italics, unlike, say, Whistler's Mother (and the same is true of the formulation Michelangelo's David). Admittedly, the title as it is is more elegant; a case of WP:IAR, perhaps, even though there are no formal standards on how to title articles on artworks yet? My point probably comes across as nit-picking, but I'd just like to hear what the nominator makes of it. [talk to the] HAM 20:09, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for the link. An interesting conundrum, but, in the absence of a more specific naming policy, I would fall back on using the most common name in English. While the British Museum may call it The Rhinoceros, the more common name appears to be "Dürer's Rhinoceros". For what it is worth, I would put Michelangelo's David there, as the most common name of the work in English, rather than at David (Michelangelo). -- ALoan (Talk) 20:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • As a way of acknowledging that the conundrum exists, might it be a good idea to rephrase the opening sentence as "Dürer's Rhinoceros is the name commonly given to a woodcut..."? The more I look at that first sentence, the more deficient it seems. I have no other problems with the article; on the contrary, it's made an art-loving Wikipedian very happy! [talk to the] HAM 20:54, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Stampeding, Horny Support Outstanding work once more Aloan! A rather poignant article too, considering the unfortunate recent deveopements regarding the black rhino[1].

--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 22:53, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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