Wikipedia:Featured article review/Colley Cibber/archive1

Colley Cibber

• Featured article candidates/Colley Cibber
• Featured article candidates/Colley Cibber/Past

• Featured article review/Colley Cibber/archive1

Notified: Geogre, Bishonen WikiProject Biography, Wikiproject Theatre

I am nominating this featured article for review because of its lack of in-line citations: Life has only one reference (about his father), Autobiography has only one (for a quote), Cibber as actor has no references, etc. There are many more books in References than are cited in-line. Additionally, weasels are used quite prominently: "colourful", "distinctive British tradition of chatty, meandering, anecdotal memoirs". Most images need sources (I think) and ALT text. Mm40 (talk) 03:01, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• Note - there are many citations but they do not use the "ref" system - example: (Parnell, 294). These could easily be converted over. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:12, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Agree with nomination. I think all the adjectives should be removed, they are all sort of descriptive. Adjectives are unecessary and just make the page too long and hard to read. I would like to see more big pictures and less text, then I could just sort of look at them and guess what it's all about, like I do when I read my comics. Any facts that are worth keeping could be summarised in a neat info-box for anyone, like a teacher or somebody, interested because there won't be many people interested in a dead guy. Who was this guy anyway, he's been dead for so long, it's gruesome so there won't be references to find becuase his kids will all be dead too. - it's not like he's cool or his stuffs on TV, DVD or made into a computer game. Giano  08:27, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• I'll see if I can fix the referencing at least over the next few days - I've formatted the ref lists and started converting to Harvnb, although annoyingly this is the first time I've found out that Harvnb has been deliberately broken. Oh well. - Bilby (talk) 10:22, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. Please add alt text to images; see WP:ALT. Eubulides (talk) 08:28, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• Delete with maximum prejudice - no disinfobox at all, unlike many far more important articles (such as A. E. J. Collins‎). And imagine, someone refusing to force their article on to the Procrustean bed of footnotes (which remain optional), but using instead elegant Harvard citations. And using adjectives like "colourful"? O tempora o mores! More seriously, either we have Cibber's dates of birth and death wrong (11 June 1671 - 12 November 1757) or the ODNB does (6 November 1671 - 12 December 1757) or we both do (11 December, perhaps?). And is Virtue Rewarded the subtitle of his play Love's Last Shift, or is it The Fool in Fashion?[1] But anyway, per my prediction, who will be the first to launch a torpedo towards Ormulum or Jonathan Wild? Don't be shy. -- Disinfoboxman (talk) 11:26, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

You want to delete a Featured article? Cirt (talk) 11:44, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'm sure there is a word for it. Delete - remove, expunge, erase, efface, cancel, wipe out, excise, eradicate, obliterate. Surely we can't keep featured articles by a notoriously "abusive sockpuppet", can we? Particularly if they don't have the requisite density of footnotes, or have too many adjectives. -- Disinfoboxman (talk) 19:29, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• The problem isn't so much the use of Harvard in-line cites rather than footnotes, although the footnotes tend to be preferred, but that the citations are incorrect, often with full author name, no year and no page. - Bilby (talk) 12:21, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• "footnotes [are] preferred"? Who, one might ask, is passively expressing this preference? Notwithstanding, I have added some footnotes to the ODNB.
• I would note that significant portions of this article are cited inline: there is a covering footnote ("Except where otherwise indicated, all details of Cibber's private life, as well as all role information, performance dates, and quotations from contemporary reviews come from "Cibber, Colley" in the authoritative Highfill et al., Biographical Dictionary of Actors, and have where relevant been double-checked against the calendar The London Stage.") and many quotes, etc, state the source specifically inline (e.g. in the lead, 'frequent criticism for his "miserable mutilation" (Robert Lowe) of "hapless Shakespeare, and crucify'd Molière" (Alexander Pope).'; or in the section on The Careless Husband, "As late as 1929, the well-known critic F. W. Bateson described the play's psychology as "mature", "plausible", "subtle", "natural", and "affecting".") No doubt these can be converted to footnotes, if desired, but the current formulation is more elegant.
• Anyway, enough from this "sarcastic joke account". (Ad hominem for free these days. Better a sarcastic joke than [ ... ] ) -- Disinfoboxman (talk) 19:29, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Interminable response. Hi, people. I'm the main author of the article. I'm sorry people are aggravated by the referencing system I used. It's not wrong, though, and does not require being "converted over" to the "ref" system or to any kind of templates.The reason I kept it simple and non-technical is that it's a lot easier for users to add stuff if they don't have to f around with citation templates (I find them pretty unmanagable myself, and they must be a lot worse for newish users). It's not the case that footnotes "tend to be preferred"; please see SandyGeorgia's recent explanation at WT:FAC of the referencing required of a Featured article:

Recently, specific citation style requests are appearing at FAC: neither WP:WIAFA nor WP:CITE require or prescribe a specific citation style, so I hope reviewers and nominators alike will understand 2(c) of WIAFA.

It's not necessary for nominators to jump through hoops to write citations in a style preferred by an individual reviewer: it is necessary for the citation style to be consistent and for all relevant information to be provided."[2]

Read the whole, if you will. I ask the editors who are undertaking, above, with sighs, to convert the referencing in various ways, to refrain. You obviously don't want to do it, but think it's needed; I don't want you to do it, either, and will argue that it's not needed.

I'll go through those claims which I take issue with from the top and work downwards. First Mm40:

• ""Life" has only one reference (about his father), "Autobiography" has only one (for a quote), "Cibber as actor" has no references, etc." No, you misunderstand the system, and don't seem to have read the footnotes themselves. "Life" has only one footnote; that's not the same as having only one reference. The one footnote explains: "Except where otherwise indicated, all details of Cibber's private life, as well as all role information, performance dates, and quotations from contemporary reviews come from "Cibber, Colley" in the authoritative Highfill et al., Biographical Dictionary of Actors, and have where relevant been double-checked against the calendar The London Stage. In other words, the footnote isn't merely "about his father", but is many references, as Ottava Rima points out (I think; he's not necessarily referring specifically to that one), and covers all the information in "Life" (as well as lots of information in the rest of the article). Merely counting the little superscript figures in the text won't tell you what information the footnotes cover.

• "Autobiography" has two specific references, namely (see Barker) and footnote 2 (for a quote, as you say). The rest of the information in "Autobiography" is covered by footnote 1, the one you say is about his father.

• "Cibber as Actor" is again mostly covered by footnote 1, but there are also quotations in it: from Cibber's Autobiography and from the Biographical Dictionary of actors. Shouldn't they have footnotes of their own, then? That's a matter of taste; I preferred to do without, since the text combined with the list of references at the bottom of the page, contains all information that a footnote would.

Etc.

• There are many more books in References than are cited in-line.*

Do you mean that there are many more books in References than have footnotes (superscript numbers) inline? There's nothing wrong with that, you know. All the books in References are cited—as in used, mentioned, supplying information to the text—inline.

Bilby, I'm sorry my references annoyed you. I don't understand your objection that "the citations are incorrect, often with full author name, no year and no page." (Do you mean without full author name..?) I merely identify the work in the text, in parenthesis, like, say "(Barker)", and give full bibliographical information in an alphabetical list at the end, as I expect you've noticed. This is one of the standard systems in my research field; if the "Harvard system" requires years given in the "short notes" at all times, then this is not precisely the Harvard system, though very close. Anyway, it's academic and consistent. Are you discussing supposed shortcomings of the "short notes" in the text (which indeed don't have any full names or years, and aren't supposed to), or in the list of references which supplement them, which I believe have full names, years, and pages (except that web versions don't always have any pagination)? The entire list may not be perfect—I'll check later—since some books have been added later by other people—for instance, one unpublished one, which is always a bit of a nightmare to refer to. But I certainly disagree that "the citations are incorrect".

One more point before I'm out of time: alt text. Are we insisting on going through all old FACs, such as this one, and adding alt text? In that case, perhaps somebody would do it? I just don't have the time, and it would be a lot more useful, frankly, than messing with my purportedly annoying and incorrect references (which I have tried to show are all right as they are).

OMG, I hope that wasn't as boring to read as it's been to write. I'll have to come back another time and reply to some other points.

I remind everybody that, as Sandy also points out, CITE is a guideline that states that established citation style should not be changed without consensus. If somebody nevertheless insists on changing my references to, for example, footnote templates, go ahead, but I hope you'll be watching the article and fixing any mistakes which arise when new users try to adapt to that rebarbative system. Bishonen | talk 19:25, 19 November 2009 (UTC).