Talk:Ealdred (archbishop of York)

Ealdred (archbishop of York) is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 23, 2020.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 27, 2008	Good article nominee	Listed
April 25, 2008	Peer review	Reviewed
February 19, 2009	Featured article candidate	Promoted

Current status: Featured article

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GA review[edit]

I have begun to review the article. I will post my initial comments within the next 48 hours. Cheers, Majoreditor (talk) 22:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article has two statements which require citations:

When King Edward died, some sources state that it was Aldred that crowned Harold Godwinson as King of England.
- The statement is sourced down below, in the second paragraph of the Archbishop of York section. If you wish, i can cite the source in the lede also. Ealdgyth | Talk 22:25, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Aldred probably was from the west of England, and possibly was related to Lyfing, his predecessor as bishop of Worcester.
- That sentence and the following one came from the same source, so it's only souced at the end, per usual usage. If you want I can of course duplicate the footnote. Ealdgyth | Talk 22:25, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

- - Good suggestions. Please cite the first in the lead and duplicate the second. Majoreditor (talk) 04:55, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - Taken care of. Ealdgyth | Talk 05:16, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

~~More comments to follow. Majoreditor (talk) 17:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)~~[reply]

Comments[edit]

Good work. The article is very close to passing GA review. It passes criteria 2 through 6:

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

a (references):

b (citations to reliable sources):

(pending above) c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

a (major aspects):

b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

No edit wars etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales):

b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

However, there are criterion #1 concerns:

a: The article's prose are marginal. The diction and tone are occasionally stilted, reading like a superannuated textbook. It's not severe enough to warrant GA failure; however, the article will need extensive wordsmithing if it's to eventually reach FA status. I am going to ask you to re-craft one particular sentence: But though often at court,[24] Aldred seems to have been no sympathiser with Norman oppression, and is even said to have bearded the king himself.

I haven't liked that sentence since I started working on the page. I think it's a refugee from the 1911 Britannica. Reworking. Anything else you saw that cries out? Ealdgyth | Talk 05:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. I just removed it, it was ugly and awkward and I cannot find a source for the statement in either Douglas' William the Conqueror or in Barlow's English Church, thus probably from 1911 and better off gone. Ealdgyth | Talk 05:16, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's sufficient, thanks. Majoreditor (talk) 05:31, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

b: MOS: Please clean up both in-citations and references so they conform to MoS.

Hm. Can you be more specific? As far as I can tell, it does conform to MoS. They are consistent, and use <ref></ref>WP:CITE does not specifiy a specific style of citation or the use of citation templates, just that it be consistent. Or at least that's what I'm reading. I'll freely admit I might have missed something buried somewhere.Ealdgyth | Talk 05:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The issue is lack of proper punctuation in the notes. There's lesser issues with punctuation in the references. See WP:CITE/ES for examples, and MLA style and Harvard referencing for specifics. I'll check back tomorrow. Cheers, Majoreditor (talk) 05:31, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Completely redone to what I think you're asking for. I'm still not totally sure if you were wanting separate notes and references or what. Decided to just go with full citation on each footnote and nix the bibliography. Ealdgyth | Talk 06:45, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am placing the GA review on hold pending the changes. I'll be happy to pass it once these concerns are addressed. Cheers, Majoreditor (talk) 04:55, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work, Ealdgyth. The article pasees criterion #1. There are no major MoS issues. The prose are passable but far from brilliant. I've wordsmithed a few phrases and encourage the article's editors to sharpen the prose even further.

I am passing the article for GA. Majoreditor (talk) 20:23, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, and thanks for the wordsmithing. It's always hard to see the problems in your own prose or in prose you've stared at for a long time. Ealdgyth | Talk 20:45, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments[edit]

In regards to Ealdgyth asking me to look over the article, I have a few queries, and grammatical suggestions. I'm holding off on actually editing the article for copyedits because I want approval, don't want to change meanings and am horrible about English English (I have no idea if "defendor" is correct or not :P). Anyhow:

(Defendor is probably a misspelling of mine... oops!) Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Ealdred, or Aldred (died 11 September 1069), English ecclesiastic," - why's there the English ecclesiastic bit tacked on with the commas, rather than "Ealdred (yada yada) was a (blah blah)"?
- Fixed. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"Ealdred supported Harold as king, but when Harold was defeated at the Battle of Hastings, Aldred first supported Edgar the Ætheling, but eventually supported King William the Conqueror." - that's a lot of support, mix it up :P "threw his backing" or something to liven it up and make it less repetitious.
- Clarified. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"William never quite trusted Ealdred or the other English leaders, and Ealdred had to accompany William back to Normandy in 1067," - it can be inferred later on that William's not an Englishman, but it might be better to explicitly state he's a norman to make this sentence clearer.
- Clarified in the above fix. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"No contemporary records exist of his time as abbot.[6]"- this means that the medieval chronicler before is a later source, right? Then perhaps it would be better to have his reportings after the admission about a lack of contemporary records? (I just don't trust them medieval chroniclers much, is all ;)
- Heh. No it means that there are no documents dealing with his administration of the abbey. Will attempt a clarification. (This is the sort of thing it's great to have a non-medievalist look for... medievalists know that "contemporary records" is shorthand for "we dont' have any documents that are genuine from his time as abbot that shed any light on how he administered the abbey." (grins) Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Throughout the article I'm kinda' put off by the usage and placement of "he"/"him", whatever. For example, the first sentence of a section starts "The Handbook of British Chronology Third Edition says he", which is a little unclear. More offputting is when paragraphs start with he and then mention his name later on, such as the second paragraph of the "bishop" section: "He was an advisor to King Edward the Confessor, and was often involved in government.[12] Ealdred in 1046 led an unsuccessful expedition against the Welsh.[12]" These kinds of sentences give it a sort of stilted, I've copied info from other sources and threw it together feeling.
- (grins) I'll leave this to you when you get a chance to copyedit it. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Terms that should be explained, perhaps not necessary in the lead but definitely in the article body: see, the Norman Conquest (you first mention "post-Conquest", so that should at least be linked.)
- Fixed. Any others? Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Some occasional clauses could be made more straightforward and punchy, ex. "When Earl Godwin rebelled in 1051, this was a blow to Ealdred, who was a supporter of the earl and his family" to "Earl Godwin's 1051 rebellion was a blow to Ealdred"
- I leave this to you wordsmiths. I just write long sentences (grins) Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"At some point, he was alleged to have accompanied Swein on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but this isn't proven." - contraction!
- fix'd! Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Overall recommendation to provide slightly more info than a plain wikilink of names, for example "son of Edmund Ironside,", explain Edmund was a past British king or something of the sort.
- Added what I could see. Bear in mind the medievalists' myopia here... I don't need an explanation of Edmund Ironside, I know who he is (grins). Ealdgyth - Talk 01:49, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"An extant copy of this work, currently manuscript Cotton Vitellus E xii, has been identified as a copy owned by Ealdred." Extant copy is what, exactly? And what is this "currently manuscript" business? Some sort of cataloguing scheme?
- Extant means "still surviving". You are correct that the "currently manuscript" is how it is currently cataloged. I'm NOT into manuscript studies, but I have vague recollections that Cotton is the guy who origianlly collected a huge pile of medieval manuscripts and gave them to a library somewhere. (And I'm right... see Cotton library). Other medieval manuscript collections include Vitellus, and a bunch of others. Very... dry ... subject matter, even more boring than medieval bishops. (And there are people who study the various scribal hands and have cataloged THOSE too...) Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"According to the medieval chronicler John of Worcester, was given the see of Ramsbury to administer while Herman remained outside England" - subject of sentence?
- fixed. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"While in Jerusalem he made a gift of a gold chalice" - a gift to whom?
- Clarified. Source doesn't specifiy which church. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"and it appears that Ealdred intended to retain Worcester along with York, which several of his predeccessors had done" - a side note you prolly don't need to put in the article, but weren't the rules of the church you could only have one title at a time? (Of course, practice is different than theory, but just to clarify.)
- Yes, the rules were "one office" at a time. However... see Stigand, Henry of Blois, etc. THe practice of holding more than one ecclesiastical office is called pluralism, and it was one of those things you could get a dispensation for from the pope. (grins). Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"Given Aldred's known support of Godwin's family, John of Worcester is probably correct.[3]" - why does this mean that John is more likely correct (given we have established his unreliability earlier).
- Hm... that's what the source says... that John's probably correct in this instance. In other words, in this instance, the actions reported went along with John's plan/bias so he's likely to have reported it correctly. The historian's making a WAG here, given that we have little information to go on. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 18:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, thanks very much! THis is the sort of things that I need, since this is the period of time I know backwards and forwards, I put all the context in... will get to this probably this afternoon or tommorrow. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:36, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures of Ealdred[edit]

Pictures of Ealdred seems to be scarce. I have located one (here: http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-images/M815220/The-Death-of-Aldred-Archbishop-of-York-1069?img=0&search=Death%20of%20Aldred) but I am not sure if it is allowed for commercial use... --62.220.191.221 (talk) 18:41, 19 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's a 19th century imaginary image of what might have happened - as such, it's going to be misleading to put it in as the artist had no idea what Ealdred looked like. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:55, 19 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hatnote[edit]

I removed the {{For}} hatnote as it was unnecessary. A hatnote is only needed if readers are likely to get to the page but want another similarly titled one. This can happen if the article title is ambiguous: "Cat" has many meanings but the article at Cat is about the feline, so needs a hatnote. But the article title here is quite precise. Or it can happen if a redirect to the article is ambiguous.

This used to be true here, as Aldred redirected to this article, the result of an earlier page move. But the disambiguation page is a better target for that as there's no obvious primary (if anything the modern Aldred's such as Sophie Aldred and Scott Aldred are more likely to be sought by readers) and I changed it earlier today. Without that pointing at this article a reader should not end up here looking for another, so a hatnote is not needed. The guideline on this is at WP:NAMB.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 00:08, 28 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And so .. what does the hatnote hurt though? There may be people that came here looking for something, and didn't find the Ealdred/Aldred that they were looking for. I don't see what the hatnote hurts if it helps even that one person.... Ealdgyth - Talk 00:11, 28 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

They could come here for all sorts of reasons, looking for all sorts of things. Some other Archbishop of York, or Worcester, for example, or some entirely unrelated article. The hatnote is not there to cover all such possibilities, but only very likely cases, where the article title itself or a redirect to it is ambiguous. The hatnote position and emphatic styling is so it can't be missed, on the assumption that many or most readers will want to use it. For just one person it's much too excessive.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 00:26, 28 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The ambiguous terms "Aldredus" and "Ealdred (bishop)" still redirect here. If you want to fix all those links and then redirect those terms to the dab page, I wouldn't have a problem removing the hatnote. Otherwise, leave it. Srnec (talk) 21:12, 28 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Slight inconsistencies[edit]

In the lead we say William never quite trusted Ealdred but in the Legacy section Ealdred was one of a few native Englishmen who William appears to have trusted. Probably it's a question of degree but we do seem to be leaning in different directions.

For the date of his ceasing to be Bishop (or Administrator) of Hereford, we have 1060 in Diplomatic travels section and succession box but 1061 in the Welsh affairs, Jerusalem, and Worcester section. This may be complicated by the question of when the new year started in those days.--Cavrdg (talk) 08:40, 23 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Irrelevant photo in infobox[edit]

I know this article made featured, so clearly lots of people think it's fine, but I think the photo in the infobox is totally unrelated to the article's content, and might even be misleading. I'm not going to change anything, because it's featured and I trust others more than myself, but I definitely feel the need to comment about it somewhere. 2601:643:8100:2921:7DCE:2E12:776C:240F (talk) 18:31, 23 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]