Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Richmond Bridge, London/archive1

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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 promoted by Karanacs 20:49, 22 May 2009 [1].

Richmond Bridge, London[edit]

Nominator(s):  – iridescent 20:19, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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Part of my long-term plan for a GT/FT on Thames bridges (probably never to be completed, as there are 33 in London alone). This one passed GAC a couple of months ago, and has now been expanded and cleaned up further and the odd stray uncited fact cited. Relatively short, but IMO says all that ought reasonably to be said on the subject. As with what seems to be every article, a significant nod is due to Malleus on this one for (again) cleaning up an article on a topic in which he likely doesn't have the least interest. – iridescent 20:19, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - With one comment that's more of a question.
Call me ignorant, but I think that the first sentence should be rewritten as Richmond Bridge is a Grade I listed 18th-century stone arch bridge which spans the River Thames at Richmond, in southwest London, England, and connects the two halves of the present-day London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. - I realize this has less flow, but the first seems improper. Once again, feel free to call me ignorant.

Otherwise, this is brilliant. ceranthor 21:10, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Done, although I've used "crosses" rather than "spans". – iridescent 21:16, 15 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with some comments:
  • Background
    • The article cited in reference 3, which gives the date for the earliest recorded crossing as 1439 not 1459.
      • Replying point by point, even though it'll make the FAC messy, as otherwise it'll be impossible to keep track of what's a reply to what. The following list all from User:DavidCane
        Fixed – iridescent 00:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "the Twickenham Ferry, slightly upstream, was also in service from at least 1652" - shouldn't there be "as early as" before the year?
      • I don't think it's necessary, but if you think it's a problem feel free to change it; I've no strong opinion. – iridescent 00:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "the river crossing became a major traffic bottleneck" might be better as "the lack of a permanent river crossing became a major traffic bottleneck"
      • Disagree; the lack of a bridge might have caused the bottleneck but it was the ferry itself that was the bottleneck. – iridescent 00:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • It was obviously sometime before 1760, but in which year did George II grant William Windham the right to operate the ferry?
      • No source seems entirely sure; it must be in an archive somewhere, but I can't find anything that gives a date more precise than "by the 1770s". (Even 1760 isn't necessarily an upper limit; George could have granted it on completion of military service, or some such arrangement, and the lease not have come into place until after George's death) – iridescent 00:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Design
    • You could pipe Richmond Bridge Act, 1772 to hide the year as it is already given earlier in the sentence.
      • I've left the date in intentionally as there was also a Richmond Bridge Act 1773. – iridescent 00:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • There should be a space in 2s6d.
      • I'll take your word for it; old British currency is something I'll never understand. – iridescent 00:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • You could add the percentage for the incline of 1 in 16 (6.25%).
  • Construction
    • "in 16 May..." should be "on 16 May..."
    • Two uses of contract in the first sentence - suggest changing "was given the contract" to "was appointed".
      • Reworded to "The building of the bridge was put out to tender, and on 16 May 1774 Thomas Kerr was given the contract" – I want to avoid "appointed" as IMO it has the wrong connotations (of patronage rather than open bidding). – iridescent 00:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • OK. But my interpretation of "given" and "appointed" would be the opposite of yours - appointed suggests to me that there is a process involved whereas given doesn't. --DavidCane (talk) 23:35, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • Changed to "awarded", which should do nicely. – iridescent 19:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Need a comma after "With additional costs".
    • "The bridge was the subject of paintings by many of the leading artists of the day". To what time frame is "of the day" referring? The implication is that it is around the time of the opening of the bridge, but Constable and Turner had only just been born. As the caption says, Rowlandsons's picture was done about 1810. Constable's and Turner's pictures were even later - done in about 1818 and 1828 respectively, I think.
      • Changed to just "many leading artists". – iridescent 00:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Not sure that the last three paragraphs of this section belong under the Construction heading. These could be combined with the first two paragraphs of the next section which don't really belong under 20th-century remodelling.
      • Agree and have changed the headers and added a section; this was a holdover from when the article was only 10kb and I didn't want "header clutter". – iridescent 00:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • 20th-century remodelling
    • You could link to Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company.
      • Have done so – I assumed this was some long-forgotten Victorian firm that would never warrant an article, but it turns out it still exists and is one of the biggest engineering firms in the world. Oops. – iridescent 00:36, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • The caption to the image of the bridge is a bit misleading as the original bridge is the wider of the two portions visible in the arch rather than the narrower portion as suggested.
      • Added a "paler new section" to make it clear which is the new and which the old part.
  • Legacy
    • The bicentennial would have been celebrated in 1977 not 1777.
  • --DavidCane (talk) 00:16, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Image review: no problems with the images here. They are verifiably either in the public domain or appropriately licensed for free use. Jappalang (talk) 08:14, 16 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments -
  • Current ref 36 (Images of England) Has the publisher run into the title. Needs to be separated out.
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:19, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's down to the formatting of the {{IoE}} template, not me. As it's a very heavily used template and changing it would affect every article that mentions a listed building, I'm not going to unilaterally change it. – iridescent 19:32, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hm... I added "Images of England website" after the template, that work? (It's the same sort of thing I do with any {{cite web}}'s I use, I just manually add the access date after, since I hate how the template formats the date.) That does it! All done! Ealdgyth - Talk 20:33, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support but with some comments - 1) "Local resident William Windham had been sub-tutor to" could we have a date? or a decade? I had to guess. :) We have "until 1798" but no beginning date. 2) "in 1772 the Richmond Bridge Act 1772" the redlink may need the 1772, but having "in 1772" seems silly. Perhaps pipe the redlink in a manner like [[Richmond Bridge Act 1772|Richmond Bridge Act]]. The commissioners for the bridge are interesting, is there anything to describe that? I think people would like to know that Garrick was a famous actor without clicking the link. 3) "The commission appointed" Perhaps move this up to the preceding paragraph so it doesn't dangle out all alone there. 4) Perhaps move the picture in "Design" up to the middle paragraph for aesthetic reasons. 5) "The bridge was built in Portland stone" Perhaps "with" or "from" Portland stone, or rewrite it to say "composed of". 6) The paragraph starting "In 1846 the first railway" seems to dangle without a direct connection to the bridge. 7) "The plans were strongly opposed on aesthetic grounds" lacks a citation to it but is explained in the next paragraph. Perhaps a stronger connection between the two paragraphs (such as moving that line down, or moving the line in the second paragraph about the proposal up). Ottava Rima (talk) 05:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Replying in turn:
      1 Regarding William Windham, while every history of the bridge mentions him, I find it very hard to find specific dates (see my comment to DavidCane above regarding the date he was granted the lease). I'm sure an expert in the court of George II could cite it in seconds, but he's only mentioned as brief background and it's a subject about which I know little, and wouldn't know where to start. The important point – "he did some favors for the royal family so they give him the ferry" – is IMO all that the general reader of the article will need.
      2 As that makes two people supporting piped link and none in favor of keeping the "1772", I've piped the link. (Although it's a valid redlink, I doubt we'll have articles on either Act any time soon, so it's a moot point.)
      I was trying to avoid making the section on the Commissioners too long – and certainly to avoid a laundry-list of all 60 – so picked a few representative ones to try to give a flavor of the commission's composition. I agree that people who don't recognize the names will find it meaningless, so have expanded it to "including landscape architect Lancelot "Capability" Brown, historian and politician Horace Walpole and playwright and actor David Garrick" which hopefully sets enough of a tone without being too long.
      3 Merged the two paragraphs.
      4 I ideally wanted to keep this image next to the text description of the bridge, but have moved it; I agree that in its current placement it was too liable to push the following header sideways.
      5 I think "built in" is more accurate than other wordings even though it's a bit of a formal wording – "built with…" to me suggests "included some Portland stone", not "built entirely using Portland stone".
      6 Agree that the paragraph about the 19th century growth of Richmond dangles slightly, but it's too short to warrant its own section, but absolutely necessary towards setting a background for why a bridge built for a country village couldn't handle the population of a large commuter suburb. If you can think of a way around this, by all means do!
      7 I've added a cite to (the same) reference to the first "opposition to widening plans" sentence. I think the duplication is necessary, as the timescale was "widening plans made → opposed → rejected due to opposition → new bridge fails to solve problems → widening plans again → accepted this time despite opposition", and the fact of the widening plans being submitted twice – and why they were rejected the first time but accepted two years later – is such a pivotal point in the bridge's history.
      Hope that helps… – iridescent 19:40, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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