User talk:TheTechnician27/Archives/2021/May

Socrates Nelson

Hi! I assume if you're active right now you'll have seen I've updated the class on the Socrates Nelson talk page to B. I did this based on the biography assessment scale but I think it's very high quality and have taken the liberty of adding B class to its other project templates, too. Also thank you for your extensive comments, which helped direct me around what I was looking for to assess it, like the article's own little manual!

I think this is a very neat article and I would happily review it if you were to nominate it for GA now (which I do recommend), though I may have been too involved at this point to do that. There are some things that I think would need improvement before A or GA class, I'll leave some comments.

B1 In the references, the Joseph R. Brown, Territorial Printer 1853 citations appear WP:V but because of the mixed-format, are showing errors. This needs resolving either with the appropriate harv template or by using a consistent formatting style. I believe this is a requirement for both A (at biography) and GA.

B3 and B6 Now, #3 "defined structure" says that Content should be organized into groups of related material, including a lead section and all the sections that can reasonably be included in an article of its kind at B-class, and while the Nelson article may be missing some of "all the sections", I feel that renaming the "Early life" header as "Early and personal life" would negate that need and so the content of the sections meets this. At A-class for biographies, it may be asked for different sections: while the headers and content match and are suitable, splitting the career into business and politics is achronological. I am personally in favor of this where appropriate, to suitably cover details that would otherwise be scattered or need repeating, but some biography editors still prefer what was the typically style a while ago where there was a "biography" or "life" header and nearly everything was chronologically dumped under that. This should not be an issue at GA, and I do think you could (should, really) skip A-class, which is becoming less common anyway.

B4 Depending on the reviewer, there is borderline narration: while opening a paragraph with That same fall, he took a steamboat farther north to the fledgling town of Stillwater and opened its first general store or Riding a boom in real estate speculation and soaring land prices, Nelson and Churchill deeded 40 acres isn't strictly encyclopedic language. But this kind of language detail is an FA concern that I am not an expert in at all.

B5 The images are great, but just a note that captions only need periods if they are complete sentences, and that for GA it is not a requirement but certainly a benefit to have alt text for accessibility. I can help with these if you want.

All in all, a quality article, and, as I said, I would recommend nominating this for GA now. Some tidying may be needed, but it's almost there and that can be covered in its nomination review - it's much better than a lot of articles start when nominated. Kingsif (talk) 14:16, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

@Kingsif: I've actually been inactive for a bit, so the update is greatly appreciated.

B1 – I actually didn't realize the Joseph R. Brown citation wasn't working with the 'sfn' template. While I'm not sure who exactly these were collated by, "Collated pursuant to a resolution of March 5th, 1853" would mean they were collated on behalf of or even by the Minnesota Territorial Legislature (Joseph R. Brown was, after all, the territorial printer), so like you, I see no issue with WP:V. All of the books that have more than one reference to them appear in the bibliography and use sfn, though I could also expand that to books that have just one reference. Regarding fixing the Joseph R. Brown citation, as these are just collated documents from the Minnesota Territorial Legislature and the Minnesota Supreme Court, I could easily just list those as authors 1 and 2, making the sfn both more useful for readers and making the template actually work properly. Update: I went ahead and implemented the fix for the Joseph R. Brown citations.

B3 and B6 – As far as 'Early life' versus 'Early and personal life' goes, this is the best way I could think to go based on the information that's in the article. Essentially, a lot of 'Personal life' information exists within the 'Later life' section, so just renaming 'Early life' would be a pretty conspicuous misnomer (i.e., the section would leave out a fair bit of information on his personal life). If I were to merge 'Later life' into 'Early life' and simply call it 'Personal life', the length would be somewhat awkwardly straddling the line between having and not having subsections (I think it feels quite elegant in its current state without subsections); the jump in time would also be fairly enormous, insofar as the chronological transition from 'Early life' to 'Business ventures' in its current state is fairly coherent (1852 to 1851, but whaddya gonna do?). I think merging 'Later life' into 'Early life' would be the best option of these two, but I think this would be a lateral change at best and somewhat detrimental at worst. I think something like one 'Personal life' section works much better for much longer articles whose 'Personal life' sections are unambiguously going to need multiple subsections (e.g. Donald Trump). However, there are GA biographies that have a similar beginning to this one, such as Abraham Lincoln, where the words 'Personal life' don't have a mention in the entire article.

Regarding the shared chronologies of 'Business ventures' and 'Political career', I split these very early on and looked back at that decision over and over again every time I found new information. These two careers – in the literature I have found – essentially don't overlap at all. There's no way whatsoever to connect any points from the 'Business ventures' section to anything from the 'Political career' section and vice versa, meaning any section merging them would be turning two coherent, chronological narratives running parallel to each other into a schismatic, barely coherent mess of "and then he did business things, and then he did political things, and business, and politics...", etc. While all of the sections are themselves strictly chronological, a chronology dump like you described would create a wildly inferior article to conform to some unwritten norm about how biographies should be structured.

Of all the aspects of the article, what sections I should have and which information goes in what section to make the article as coherent and smoothly flowing as possible are probably the two I've put the most thought into. I've thought of flipping 'Business ventures' and 'Political career', but think 'Early life' flows into 'Business ventures' better and that 'Political career' flows into 'Later life' better; I've thought of consolidating the two under a 'Career' section but determined after hours of trying that it would greatly detract from the article; I've thought of merging 'Later life' and 'Legacy', but determined they work better apart – especially because the gallery in 'Legacy' is farther away from the commemorative tablet image; and of course the changes I've already made throughout the article's development such as splitting 'Early life and business career', creating 'Legacy', and moving a large chunk of information from 'Later life' into 'Business ventures'. If a huge new source of information comes to light (akin to what I found with Empson 2002), it could shift the paradigm here, but I think the section layout right now is the strongest I can make it with my current understanding of the subject.

I know this was long, but I'm sure I'm going to have to make this case to a GA reviewer (you or otherwise), so at least it's copy-pasteable for later – assuming the concerns are similar.

B4 – I've actually been thinking of replacing the word 'fledgling' with the phrase 'recently settled'. I added 'fledgling' to hopefully give readers a better context into the state of the town at the time Nelson arrived there, but I think 'recently settled' would make things more clear – both to readers who do know what the word means and especially to those who would otherwise have to go look it up. As to some of the less encyclopedic language in that second paragraph of 'Business ventures', I could in hindsight try toning that down. The sort of "textbook trying to make history sexy" language wasn't there because I was trying to be unencyclopedic, but because I desperately wanted to avoid my usual bland-as-stale-toast narrative prose of, "and then April 18XX this happened, and then in August this, but then this. Then in 18XX this." However, now that I at least have the basic structure – the "skeleton", so to speak – of the paragraph, I should be able to take off a bit of that rhetorical makeup. Even if this is more FA territory, I still would like the article to be the best it can, no matter its rating, as ultimately I want to use these reviews as an opportunity to improve the article.

B5 – Went ahead and fixed this. I'm glad you like the images; the first one was something I stumbled across 100% by accident, not knowing it would lead to a goldmine of content from the LOC that Commons didn't/doesn't yet have. I'm still a bit disapponited that I never found an image of the subject himself, though, but maybe someday, right?

I think I'm going to try to nominate this for GA and hope it's not torn apart too mercilessly. I've never nominated an article or done anything involving GA review, so I'm a bit nervous I'll look like a goofball, but I'll read the instructions page, give it a go, and hope things go smoothly. Having you to give me something to strive toward has been a great help, though, and it gives me confidence that the nomination will go alright. TheTechnician27 (Talk page) 00:23, 28 May 2021 (UTC)