Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Knights Templar

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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 03:22, 12 April 2007.

Knights Templar[edit]

Self-nom. This is an article about a major subject, the medieval order of the Knights Templar. The article went up once for FA back in 2004, and has been substantially expanded since then, with a MilHist peer review, and is currently at Good article status. The article still gets occasional POV wars, primarily because there's a lot of misinformation about the Templars out on the web, and there are also modern groups which claim to be the current incarnation of the medieval organization. But wherever possible we've stuck with high quality references which have been extensively double- and triple-checked, and done our best to make this article a hub which spokes the majority of the more speculative stuff out to other articles which we're working on separately. Assuming that featured status is approved, I'd like to see the article featured on October 13th of this year if possible. That will be the 700-year anniversary of the famous events on Friday, October 13, 1307, when King Philip IV of France had many Templars simultaneously arrested, charged with heresy, and eventually burned at the stake. I hope you'll find the article both informative, and interesting. :) --Elonka 01:17, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support — looks quite good; I'll come back with some comments and suggestions later. — Deckiller 01:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The second paragraph is very unfocused. Any article that references large tracts of land needs a Monty Python reference ;-) But overall, the article just doesn't feel right... too much in the narrative style with exposition about the situation.Balloonman 07:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Lead has been re-written. --Elonka 05:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object mainly on the brilliant prose requirement. Grammar wonks are likely to hound any article that begins (not a sentence or a paragraph but) a section with however. That's one of numerous places where the prose could use a good copyeditor. Suggest withdrawing this nomination and routing through WP:GA and Wikipedia:Peer review. DurovaCharge! 21:23, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I stand corrected about GA (shame on me) and would gladly support if the wikignomes visit at midnight and remove a few weeds from this lovely garden. DurovaCharge! 03:41, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've tightened up the writing a bit, let me know if you have any other specific concerns? --Elonka 05:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Many FACs are initially opposed because of 1a; several (note the plural) copy-editors give the article a runthrough, and the oppose is withdrawn. It is not a situation that requires withdrawal and another peer review. I'll see if I can find time to give it a look; I do agree that the prose is a little flowery in some areas. — Deckiller 00:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • We've given it a few more copyediting passes, working on thinning out some of the adjectives.  :) --Elonka 02:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support It does look good. (aside, to Durova, it has gone through WP:GA. Cary Bass demandez 21:46, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I agree that the prose needs some work, but a couple of good pass-throughs could probably fix that. The bigger issue for me is length: I don't know that this article is written in a good summary style. In particular, given that there is a main article (History of the Knights Templar), I wonder why the history section is 3,000 words -- it seems a bit much if there is another complete article on the section. Further, given the traffic this article probably receives - and the edit wars noted above, I wonder how stable the article is. On the plus side - great work with citations and pictures. -- Pastordavid 22:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Stability seems to be good right now. The main instigator in the most recent edit war, along with sockpuppets, has been blocked, and I haven't seen any problems re-emerge since protection was lifted. --Elonka 05:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • That's great. My other major concern is the "history of.." section. Please consider tightening that up with a some more concise writing. -- Pastordavid 16:02, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Neutral. I would like to see the prose be a little more concise, but that is not a big enough objection to cause me to oppose. -- Pastordavid 19:23, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I agree that the prose should be more succinct. I performed some sample fixes in the first couple sections, but it could use a runthrough by someone familiar with this topic. — Deckiller 19:25, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. -- I think it's in good shape. I'll keep my eye on proceedings here, and am expecting to voice support once concerns about prose have been addressed. There's some mixing of American and Commonwealth spelling: 'Rumors', but 'organisation', for example, which should be sorted. — BillC talk 00:58, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Support now. It's a great article, and very thorough. I learned a lot. I don't find the prose over-elaborate, but to be engaging. — BillC talk 21:42, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I like the structure and the information, and to me the prose is acceptable. J. Spencer 01:55, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Well sourced and comprehensive article with an abundance of free images available; an ideal candidate. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 06:07, 31 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. All of my concerns have been addressed; some great work has been done on the article in the last few days. This is a very fine article. -- Pastordavid 07:31, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I did some cleanup and formatted the references; urbanlegends.about.com is not a reliable source. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:32, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for the reference formatting.  :) As for the about.com reference, though there is indeed unreliable information at other locations on about.com, I would argue that the particular article being referenced here,[1] meets the standard of reliability because of how well-sourced it is. --Elonka 18:24, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • But since we have no way of knowing if the author is accurately reporting those sources, it would be better to go directly to those sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:51, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The problem with listing primary sources in this case, is that I feel that that strays too far into the realm of original research. The statement that we're trying to reference in the Wikipedia article, is that the date of Friday, October 13, 1307, is incorrectly associated with the legend of Friday the 13th. But going deeper on sourcing here, would involve referencing books from the 19th century that don't include the phrase.[2][3] Which is why I feel that it's better to reference the about.com article. It's well-written, directly relevant, has a clearly-listed author, cites its sources, and, most importantly in my mind, is not contradicted by any other reliable published source. As such, I think it's appropriate. --Elonka 23:16, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the explanation; I would strike my object, but I didn't object :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment—Quite well-written, but many things need fixing, such as these issues that I found easily at random. Please find a copy-editor who's unfamiliar with the text.
    • "With little financial resources at the time,"—"few". Remove "at the time"?
    • "Poverty did not last long though."—Uncomfortable "though", especially as a back-reference at the start of a paragraph.
    • "Declared ... to be not subject to local laws"—Better way of saying this?
    • "Heavily-armed"—NO hyphen after "-ly".
    • "innovated ways of generating letters of credit for pilgrims"—Fist word inelegant.
    • "This may have been the first form of checking put into use"—Your piped link "checking" (US spelling, I guess) is confusing. Remove last three words.
    • "After several disastrous battles including the pivotal Battle of the Horns of Hattin," Comma after "battles" for nested phrase. Tony 22:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Just gave it a full ce pass (as 216.194.0.238--frickin' loss of session data!). I'll give it another tonight.—DCGeist 19:41, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • It was you I gave a flower to then! :) I support this article in its candidacy for featured status.--Alf melmac 19:45, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Query This bit from the Organisation section needs revising:
the knights, wearing white mantles and equipped as heavy cavalry; the sergeants, drawn from lower social strata than the knights and equipped as light cavalry
The "mantles" bit--covered very clearly elsewhere in the section--should be replaced with a phrase summarizing the social strata from which the knights were drawn in order to parallel and clarify the description of the sergeants. Were the knights all of noble birth? Mostly nobles, along with some rich members of the mercantile class? Or what?—DCGeist 00:53, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. --Elonka 03:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I think this article is of FA standard. Kyriakos 14:45, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Looks great.—DCGeist 04:45, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would put decline and fall at the end and maybe change the "History" Section into Rise fall and Decline stand-alones.Samrsharma 14:32, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.
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