Talk:Stephen Hopkins (politician)

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Stephen Hopkins (politician) has been listed as one of the History 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
September 19, 2012	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on June 6, 2012.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Rhode Island governor and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Stephen Hopkins (pictured), was also an astronomer who helped take measurements during the 1769 transit of Venus across the sun?

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Citation under "Legacy" section[edit]

This article states that "Hopkins is renowned in historical calligraphy as author of 'the worst signature on the Declaration of Independence,'" but does not provide a citation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.177.38.5 (talk) 07:16, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This sentence has been removed. As Hopkins aged he developed palsy in his hands, and it was very difficult for him to write. It is not fair to characterize him as a person with poor handwriting, because his handwriting as a young man was quite beautiful, and can still be seen in many places in the Scituate, Rhode Island town records.Sarnold17 (talk) 19:48, 18 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Stephen Hopkins (politician)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Sabrebd (talk · contribs) 22:13, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I will be reviewing this article over the next few days. It looks to be very high quality. No immediate problems are apparent. Seems to have reliable sources, seems to be written in a NPOV, no clean up banners, edit wars or obvious copyright violations. I will post more detailed comments soon.--SabreBD (talk) 22:13, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Thanks very much for picking this up.Sarnold17 (talk) 01:17, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose quality:
Lead: "a signer" - shouldn't that be a "signatory", or is this an "Americanism" I have not encountered before?
Yes, "signer" is an acceptable Americanism; I'm careful to use "signatory" when writing about English/British subjects. A place to see this American usage is Signing of the United States Declaration of Independence.

I noted that link, but wasn't quite sure to make of it in an unassessed article, but if you say it is American English that is fine by me.

This is fine. I can see where a few commas should probably be moved and a couple of sentences are a bit cumbersome, so I would think about going for a copyedit before moving to FA, but this is all very minor and well within the criteria.

Quotations need to be checked for WP:Logical quotation with punctuation not part of the quote (or if it is unclear) outside of the quotes.

B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
Lead and layout look fine. I cannot see any words to watch in here.
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. References to sources:

B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
There is one deadlink (American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915).
Dead link has been replaced with active link, and text altered accordingly.Sarnold17 (talk) 22:31, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Everything else looks fine.

C. No original research:
Cannot see any instances of this.
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 tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
Most are from the commons. File:Samuel Ward.cropped.jpg, File:RightsColoniesExamined.cropped.jpg and File:Hopkins.Stephen.grave stone.No Bur Gnd.20110722.jpgneed to be moved to the commons. Just a reminder that these will need alternative captions before going to FA.
Overall:
Pass or Fail:

Just a couple of minor issues to check. Putting this on hold for now.--SabreBD (talk) 20:37, 9 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for the delay. Assuming that the logical quotation issue is fine the rest is largely advisory, so I am passing this article as GA.--SabreBD (talk) 18:45, 19 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Thanks for your time and effort, and hope that you can stay online for a while. Best regards.Sarnold17 (talk) 19:23, 19 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment[edit]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Stephen Hopkins (politician)/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

I rated this article as "start class." It provides more useful information than a mere stub should. Though it needs citations and should probably be expanded, the information provided is a good start.--Evb-wiki 01:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 01:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 07:00, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Description of Wilkinson[edit]

How should Jemima Wilkinson be described in this article? I added the main descriptor from the lead of Wilkinson's own biography, "evangelist" (or at least, what had been the main descriptor in that article for years, until a recent unexplained removal of it by the same editor), but another editor changed this to "self-proclaimed prophetess", which is problematic in several ways, e.g. using the uncommon and archaic word prophetess instead of the more common word prophet to unnecessarily gender the referent who specifically rejected being referred to with gendered terms and who thus, on a basic level, was never a self-proclaimed prophetess. Other sources, and e.g. wikidata, describe the person as a "preacher", which accurately describes their main activity. Which term should be used? I would suggest preacher as the best choice and evangelist as the second best (and prophet as third best). -sche (talk) 18:06, 29 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

She considered herself a prophet, and she uttered prophecies. In treating historical topics, it is good to use the terminology that was used at the time—and she would have been referred to as a "prophetess" rather than a "prophet". An "evangelist" is someone who shares the gospel or brings good news, so I suppose it could be used in a loose sense. All the same, I've changed it to "Quaker preacher", which is probably the best short description. —Dilidor (talk) 11:45, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Parkinson’s[edit]

It has been conjectured that Stephen Hopkins had Parkinson’s disease. 108.34.248.223 (talk) 16:06, 9 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]