Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of tablets on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by The Rambling Man 18:18, 12 September 2009 [1].

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List of tablets on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice

Nominator(s):  – iridescent 01:39, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

• Featured list candidates/List of tablets on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice/archive1

I am nominating this for featured list because... This is my first FLC nomination, so apologies if I've got anything wrong, but as far as I can see this meets all the criteria. A sister article to Postman's Park, this documents an interesting piece of both social and artistic history, and an unusual collaboration between four leading figures in different artistic disciplines (George Frederic Watts, Ernest George, William De Morgan and Mary Fraser Tytler). – iridescent 01:39, 20 August 2009 (UTC) Note: The alt-text intentionally just gives the design style of each plaque, as the text is already listed for each entry separately. – iridescent 01:42, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Comment Certainly one of the more unusual lists I've seen. You're going to be annoyed at this comment, but we really should use human readable formats in the table rather than ISO. You can use {{dts}} for this purpose. Alternatively, I could do this, but you would have to wait about 14–16 hours. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:04, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

✓ Done. Regexes are a wonderful thing sometimes. Any way to force the date columns narrower, as the expanded date format is squishing the two end free-text columns now? – iridescent 02:22, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah, an AWB expert. I'll look into the width thing. Dabomb87 (talk) 02:30, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, so after playing around with the widths for a little bit I decided that it looked messy no matter what. So, I changed the note system and moved the "Notes" column into footnotes instead. See User:Dabomb87/Misc. What do you think? Dabomb87 (talk) 02:59, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, although I've used line-breaks instead of bullet points to separate the notes as the bullets looked a bit obtrusive to me. – iridescent 11:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

The line breaks are fine. Dabomb87 (talk) 20:00, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

You need to use {{sortname}} for Commemorates column. Dabomb87 (talk) 20:02, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I considered it, but I thought it would cause more problems than it solves, as some of the tablets commemorate multiple names. I think it may make more sense to make that particular column unsortable - realistically, I can see no circumstances in which someone will want to put these in alphabetical order (chronological order by date of installation and date of the event commemorated are the only ones that really ought to be sortable IMO) - someone looking for a particular name is more likely to either scroll down or ctrl-f. The designer column is sortable just because that particular column was sortable on the table I copied this code from and there wasn't a pressing need to change it, but there's no particular reason for that to be either. – iridescent 20:08, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Note: Minor tweak made - I've made the "subject name" unsortable per the reasons above, and made the row/column position sortable, as I can imagine someone being interested in the order in which they actually appear. – iridescent 20:19, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Comment Neat-o. I like this alot. I whole-heartedly endorse Damomb's mock-up, namely in taking the notes out of the table. Two text-heavy columns made the table unwieldy and therefore too big for smaller monitors. And there wasn't quite enough of them to warrant adding a whole big text-filled column, I thought. Also, I think the last designer cell, credited to Royal Doulton, needs a note, since it wasn't really him (right?). Drewcifer (talk) 10:20, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

No, the last designer cell is correct. Royal Doulton is a ceramics design team (currently part of Waterford Wedgwood), not a specific individual - John Doulton himself died in 1873. Doulton don't credit the individual designers of pieces (from the style, the main 1908 batch would probably have been by Leslie Harradine or George Tinworth but that's pure OR). – iridescent 11:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Support: Very nicely presented piece of social history with excellent photographs of the tablets. Some poignant stories of selflessness here. Couple of comments:

1. Is there any information on the original process for nominating or selecting a candidate for a tablet? Note i suggests that the original list was prepared by George Watts, but, after his death, were the other choices made purely by Mary Watts or was there a committee of worthies?
2. Given that we now have a new tablet for Leigh Pitt, is there a procedure for considering new nominations and, if there is, will it only cover new actions or will there be a review of potential candidates during the 80 years between 1927 and 2007?
3. Is the red-link for Alice Ayres deliberate?

--DavidCane (talk) 03:45, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

1. The story is given in more detail at the main Postman's Park article - I was trying to avoid content-forking, and intentionally only put enough on this article so that someone stumbling across it can work out what they're looking at.
   • The original 24 were selected by Watts from newspaper reports that caught his eye (hence the bias towards London and Surrey, where he lived);
   • In 1904 Watts handed over control to the vicar and churchwardens of St Botolph's Aldersgate, but Mary Watts retained effective control;
   • The 24 added in 1908 were selected by Mary Watts from George Watts's list (hence nothing more recent than 1902); in 1910 she gave up on it to dedicate her time to the projects in Compton;
   • Alfred Smith was added at the behest of his local MP;
   • The three policemen added in 1930 were the result of the vicar & churchwardens canvassing assorted public bodies for nominations, and the Met Police replying first;
   • Leigh Pitt was added when his fiancée approached the Diocese of London directly and they flexed their muscles to get the church to authorise it.
2. There doesn't seem to be a formal process for submitting nominations. The Diocese of London's official position is "Watts created the memorial to pay tribute to unsung heroes and it is appropriate that Mr Pitt should be commemorated in this way. The Diocese welcomes the renewed interest in this important part of London’s heritage. We would consider applications for further commemorative plaques, on individual merit, for acts of remarkable heroism.", which I would read as only accepting recent cases - if you'll forgive the OR, I suspect they don't want it overwhelmed with WWII-related nominations.
3. Yes, the Alice Ayres redlink is intentional - it should turn blue fairly soon. She was a very high profile case back in the 19th century (for some reason, the New Zealand press seemed particularly obsessed with the case), and Closer means she's by far the best known name there now, so I really want to fill that one in. (Because the names were all chosen from press reports, and covered in the press at the time of the relevant installations, technically every name should be a live redlink, but I thought that would be too ugly. The Watts Gallery have a book in the pipeline with biographies of all the people listed, so it may be possible to turn this into a true linkfarm at some point.) – iridescent 19:22, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

I see - never got around to seeing that film and hadn't spotted that the park was a FAC. --DavidCane (talk) 22:49, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Redlink now blue. – iridescent 22:53, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Support My main concern—table formatting—was resolved. The writing, length and structure of the lead are very good. Just a few minor points:

• "Postman's Park was built on the church's former churchyard, and the church " If there is any way to rephrase so that "church" doesn't appear thrice in part of a sentence, that would be nice.
• The alt text is good; my only minor nitpick is that, like captions, sentence fragments should not have punctuation at the end.
• I agree that it's probably not necessary to sort by commemorates, but perhaps make "designer" sortable? Some readers may find it useful, and it's easy (no hidden sortkey needed).
• Usage of the interpunct is inconsistent; best to omit it. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:58, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Sources look good. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:58, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

• I've reworded it to "Postman's Park was built on St Botolph Aldersgate's former churchyard, and the vicar and churchwardens were at that time trying to raise funds to secure its future", even though it forces a repetition of "St Botolph's Aldersgate". I think the full name of the church is necessary, as there's also a St Botolph's Aldgate nearby just to add to the confusion.

• Thanks, that's better. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:20, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

• To be honest, even though it's blasphemy against WP:ACCESS I'm not that concerned about getting the alt-text perfect here as long as it's adequate. This is essentially an article about the visual arts – and only gets around 10 readers per day, despite currently being listed at FLC and its sister article being listed at FAC. Realistically, the number of visually impaired people reading it will be so minimal as to be negligible.

• I fixed this myself. No worries. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:20, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

• I tried to use the interpunct whenever De Morgan had used it as a text separator (i.e., in the middle of a row of text, rather than as one of the semi-random dots he put at the end of the lines). I think it looks better off including them, otherwise we're left with hard-to-parse lines like "Aged 30 Metropolitan Fire Brigade Saved six persons". – iridescent 00:08, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

• OK. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:20, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• I still think that the Designer column should be made sortable (again, no sortkey needed), but it's not a deal-breaker. Dabomb87 (talk) 03:20, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

• Have made "designer" sortable, although it doesn't really make much difference - "order of installation" puts them in de facto order of designer, anyway. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the subject commemorated shouldn't be sortable, as for those that commemorate more than one person it means we need to pick a "primary" subject. – iridescent 17:19, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Resolved comments from Jpeeling (talk · contribs)

Comments There's some slight differences between the dates on tablets and the accompanying inscription, with regard spelling the month out when only three letters are used, e.g. Mary Rogers' tablet has Mar 30 1899, inscription has March 30 1899. Other occurences of this for Joseph Andrew Ford, Amelia Kennedy, James Hewers. Also the inscription for Alice Ayres doesn't have a date when the tablet shows one. Henry James Bristow and Alfred Smith have different dates of death in the table compared to the tablets, are these correct? --Jpeeling (talk) 19:17, 3 September 2009 (UTC) ✓ Done. Entirely my fault. The case of Alice Ayres is correct, even though the dates don't match; the fire was on 24 April (the date on the tablet) but she didn't die until 26 April - see Alice Ayres. – iridescent 13:59, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Support, comments resolved, can't find any other issues. --Jpeeling (talk) 22:13, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.