Wikipedia:Peer review/Baron Munchausen/archive1

Baron Munchausen

This peer review discussion has been closed.
There's a lot of information in this article, and I'd really appreciate thoughts as to whether all that information is arranged in a user-friendly way. Would the article read better if the sections were reordered/changed/shifted?

Thanks, Lemuellio (talk) 22:34, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Comments. Thanks for your work on this one. I have just a few copyediting comments. - Dank (push to talk)

• "Baron Munchausen.": See WP:LQ.
• "subsequently": I've generally found the word to be ambiguous in Milhist articles; try substituting "soon", "later", "later on", "consequently", or something more specific.
• "Hieronymus Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen was born in Bodenwerder, Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg. He was born as": Delete ". He was born".
• "His cousin, Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen": The {{ill}} template is fine while an article is being developed, but it's not fine at WP:FAC (and I would argue, not at PR or GAN either), because non-Wikipedians are unlikely to know what "(de)" means, and even if they know, it won't help them unless they read German. It would be better to write a stub on en.wp and link to that; the stub can then link to de.wp.
• "(1735–1739)": (1735–39) per MOSNUM.
• "cavalierly, indeed with military emphasis": I don't know what this means; one seems to contradict the other.
• "However, Münchhausen was considered an honest man in business affairs, rather than a liar. As another contemporary put it, Münchhausen's unbelievable narratives were designed not to deceive, but": Münchhausen was considered honest and his unbelievable narratives were not designed designed not to deceive, but
• - Dank (push to talk) 21:08, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

@Dank: Thanks so much! I'll polish up the article.

One question: can you give me a source for your assertion that the {{ill}} template is "not fine at WP:FAC"? I can't find anything in the MOS to discourage it, and indeed H:ILL seems to encourage it.--Lemuellio (talk) 21:27, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

I remember seeing it rejected once, and rarely brought up in the first place, but that's not much of a source. It doesn't seem like a hard call to me, for two reasons: 1. The purpose and effect of the template is a big "under construction" sign, in the hope that someone will notice that there's work that needs to be done here, and get to it. FAC is for articles where the work that obviously needs to be done already has been done. 2. I don't always keep up with new trends so I could be wrong, but it looks like a honking big Humpty-Dumptyism to me. Do you know of any professionally copyedited print text that uses "(de)" to mean "better information can be found for the thing immediately preceding, if you follow this note or reference, in German"? If not, then let's have a look at where it's used on the web, and see if the tone is suitably encyclopedic. - Dank (push to talk) 23:16, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Good points. I'll remove the template from the page. Thanks again!--Lemuellio (talk) 13:01, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

@Dank: Thanks for pointing out the syntactical question above. In this case, though, "designed not" is standard grammar, so I think we have to keep it that way (even if it sounds a bit odd at first glance). It's all a matter of word balance:

• His narratives were designed not to deceive, but to ridicule.
• His narratives were not designed to deceive, but to ridicule.

For the second version to be balanced properly, you'd need to repeat a word: "His narratives were not designed to deceive, but designed to ridicule." So, on the whole, I'm pretty sure we have to go with the first option. I hope that helps.--Lemuellio (talk) 13:05, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Right, sorry, struck. - Dank (push to talk) 13:24, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

• This article is so full of great information. Regarding organization, one note is to pull the Nomenclature section out of Memorials. Then, under Memorials, you don't need a subsection for "Other Memorials." I understand why nomenclature may be considered a memorial, but it seems hidden and somewhat off-topic (when I think of memorials, I'm imagining statues, obelisks, etc.)--Shaug80 (talk) 20:33, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• @Shaug80: Very good point! To avoid two very short sections (I just tried the split in Preview mode and it looks a bit strange), let's try switching the order of the two subsections and renaming the whole section "Legacy" (another vague word, I know, but there seem to be "Legacy" sections in a whole lot of WP bios). Maybe that will fix the problem with the counter-intuitive names. Thanks!--Lemuellio (talk) 12:55, 11 April 2015 (UTC)