Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Kent/archive1

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 not promoted 20:57, 17 July 2007 (UTC).

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Kent

I think this passes the FA criteria. Epbr123 15:29, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Support: A good and well written piece which I learned a lot from myself.  DDStretch  (talk) 09:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Fixes needed - I'll list these as I find 'em.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:25, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

• Its location between London and the continent, has lead to Kent being a front line of a number of conflicts,.. - drop first comma and "led" please! Also syntax of second clause is awry but I am not sure how to make it sound better presently.

• occupied since the Palaeolithic era .. - say "times" instead of "era", which is a specifically defined thing - Mesozoic, Paleozoic etc.

• During the Neolithic the Medway megaliths were built and there is a rich sequence... - unwieldy sentence. place first 3 words after "built" and then semicolon and next clause.

Made changes to try to resolve the first bullet point, but perhaps others have better suggestions. I've also made the edits to change the text as suggested in the second and third bullet points.  DDStretch  (talk) 10:48, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose—1a, 2a (inadequate lead) and the requirement for professional formatting.
  • "Its location between London and the continent has led to Kent being a front line of ..." This is ungrammatical ("Kent's being" is correct, although you may prefer to reword). It happens again in the next sentence: "The entire country relied on the county's ports to provide warships through much of the past 800 years, with the Cinque Ports during the 12th–14th centuries and Chatham Dockyard during the 16th–20th centuries being of particular importance." --> "England has relied on the county's ports to provide warships through much of the past 800 years; the Cinque Ports in the 12th–14th centuries and Chatham Dockyard in the 16th–20th centuries were of particular importance to the country's security." (Notice I've avoided the jingle "country/county", fixed the tense, broken the snake with a semicolon, and guessed a more specific ending.)
  • "Kent is known as the Garden of England due to its abundance of orchards and hop-gardens. Cement, papermaking and aircraft construction have also been major industries in northwest Kent, although these are now in decline." One-sentence paragraph stub. More elegant to say "is known as the Garden of England for its abundance of".
  • The ugly infobox stretches for kilometres down from the top and squashes the text. Do we really need the members of parliament—some 20 of them—listed vertically in this box? Why do we need to be told twice at the top that it's in southeast England (spelt differently in the infobox)? It's very irritating. What's wrong with a picture at the top and a smaller infobox further down, with info rationed?

Heck, you people developed the language; I'm just an ignorant colonial. Tony 15:32, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll leave the grammar to anyone who understands it (in my experience its the non native speakers who have a better understanding of! ;) )

As for the infobox, i understand you comments, but presumably the infobox is a generic one for all english / british counties used on, at a guess 40+ pages. perhaps valid comments are best addressed at the infobox's page, as for the sake of consistency across similar articles, we at the Kent article are "lumped" with the England / UK wide standard. Pickle 03:54, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I was asked to look over the article as a member of the League of Copyeditors. Some suggestions:

• Some mention of the significance of the Cinque Ports should be added in the history section, especially since they are mentioned in the lede. A paragraph would do.
• The lede mentions that Kent is called the Garden of England. Now, anyone who has read Emma would know that it is not the only county so called (there's a discussion between Mrs. Elton and Emma on this very point). I don't expect to see Emma appear in the article (that book's set in Surrey anyway) but if other counties are still so called, some modification to let the reader know that Kent shares that nickname should appear.
• The paragraph in the Geography section on the River Medway is confusing, especially the language "Here it breaks . . . " Where? Avoid such odd turns of phrase. It sounds like one of those 1940's guidebooks, "The King's England." In fact, I hope you are sure that copyrighted language has not been copied.
• The lede mentions that heavy industry in north Kent is declining, but the economy section mentions the same industries, and does not mention a decline. And in the economy section, past and present industries are interwoven. Perhaps have a separate part of the section for industry which is no longer present in Kent?
• I find the water transport subsection to be deficient. There are ferries which operate out of Dover and I believe elsewhere in Kent, to the French coast. Shouldn't they be mentioned?
• Some mention of attractions in Kent might be in order. Leeds Castle, the coastal towns such as Ramsgate and Margate, Canterbury. And how about sport? Cricket, and aren't there still a couple of Football League teams?--Wehwalt 22:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I too, have been asked to have a look. Unfortunately, I don't have much time right now, but it seems that plenty of good copyeditors have taken notice, anyway. I don't think that this article is ready to be FA. I've checked the "history" section, and found it to be a bit lacking in language and references. The section seems to assume that the reader has a good deal of knowledge about the subject, and I found the literature to be a bit uninspired. I'd go as far as to say that most of it can be written twice as long, in which case there would be much more room for useful context. —msikma (user, talk) 19:24, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

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.