Wikipedia:Peer review/William Lyon Mackenzie/archive1

William Lyon Mackenzie

I've listed this article for peer review because I want to nominate this article to GAN, then FAC.

Thanks, Z1720 (talk) 15:46, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Review by Coemgenus

General points

• I like putting the biographical details in the flow of the article, as you do, but not everyone agrees. If you can make it work in the flow of the narrative, keep it.

Do the births of his children throughout the article effect the flow? That was one of my major concerns.

Types Riot

• You could make it clearer why rioters through his press into the lake. Was it one article, or the whole tone of the paper?

In short, Mackenzie attacked the character and competence of Family Compact members. I will add this info tonight when I can take a closer look at it.

 Done

Expulsions, re-elections, and appeal to the Colonial Office

• "Lord Stanley replaced Goderich as the colonial secretary and reversed the Upper Canada reforms. He was upset by this and..." Who was upset?

Mackenzie was upset, fixed.

• Do we know exactly how many times he was expelled from the legislature?

I can count them up, but that might be synth. I will check the sources and see if someone lists it. Where in the article should we place this info?

I can't find a source that specifically lists how many times he is expelled. Is this imporant?

More later. --Coemgenus (talk) 16:06, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! I really appreciate this. Z1720 (talk) 16:58, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Comments by Johannes Schade

Dear Z1720. Please excuse my lack of experience (6000 edits) and keep in mind that I might be wrong. My English is 2nd language. I suppose anybody is allowed to comment here.

English

I find the style is precious and sometimes almost flowery. I feel it should be more concise and plain: numerous -> many, independently -> alone, business -> shop, second location -> second shop, low subscription numbers -> too few subscribers, religious denominations -> all churches, charitable prices -> cheap and so forth.

I will do a copy-edit for complex language. Sometimes a more "complicated" word is used because it is more accurate. For example, Mackenzie's mother did not raise him alone but did try to do it with little help from her family. I don't want to put "bookselling and drugstore shop" because of the way it sounds, and same with changing "low subscription numbers". I changed "religious" to "Christian" as it is more accurate. Changed "charitable" to "low" and "second location" to "second shop". Are there any other examples that I should look at?

Hi Johannes Schade I did a copy-edit of the article and tried to remove the flowery language. However, I am too close to the text (having written most of it myself) so I probably missed several examples. Can you do a readthrough and suggest additional changes? I would really appreciate it. Z1720 (talk) 00:27, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Lead

I was surprised by his death at the end of the 2nd paragraph of the 4-paragraphs lead. Should not the life be the main topic of a biography. How can his legacy take so much space in the lead? At that level we do probably not need to know that he was in the coma before dying. That can be left to the main text.

Removed "in a coma." I did a read-through the final two paragraphs of the lede and combined them into one. Is there anything in the lede that is missing?

Hoping you might find my comments helpful, Johannes Schade (talk) 18:26, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, I responded above. Z1720 (talk) 20:34, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

More criticism

Dear Z1720. Thanks for taking my criticism so well. I looked at your changes and find your article improved. I feel the "flowery" stuff is gone. I also think the shortened lead performs much better.—I read a bit more. I am entirely new to the History of Upper Canada and had not realised that York was kind of a precursor of Toronto. I have heard of Toronto. Perhaps you should clarify the relationship between York and Toronto in the lead and also in the main text as a courtesy to readers from oversea.—I also had difficulties with the Types Riot. It took me time to understand that the types were those of the printing press. I admit it is there by the wlink to Movable Type, but perhaps you can find some clever way to make it more evident.—You should state at the top of the code what variety of English you use. I usually add {{Use British English}} but yours would probably say Canadian.—I see you use an inconsistent mix of upper and lower case in your template names, {{Notelist}} appears next to {{reflist}}. I prefer to uppercase the first letter of the template name. I was prompted to that by corrections done by Tom.Bot.—I think the list of his works could do with an introductory sentence, even if very simple and banal, just confirming the the books listed below were written by him. I would call this section simply "Works".—I wanted to make a random check on a citation and took "The couple married on May 8, 1794.[8]" I am thankful for the links from the citations to the page in the source. Allows me to click through directly to check the text against the source. So I clicked and opened page 39 of Lindsey (1862) but did not find the date of his parents' marriage. So the check failed (!!!). I hope all the others are right.—I looked at your list of sources. I was surprised by the way how you distinguish between works by the same author by appending a number after the surname: {{cite book |last=Dent¹. I thought the usual way was by appending a letter to the year: *{{Cite book|last=Bagwell |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Bagwell |date=1909a |title=Ireland under the Stuarts ....—I think the "access-date" is only needed for websites, not for books or journals as they are printed and cannot change. I also think the "|url-status=live" is only needed if the website is dead. I would think the "|via=" is not needed when a "|url=" is given. Please use the |volume=" parameter for the volume number.—I would mention the children where you tell us about his marriage in the section "Early years in Canada", but I would change the heading to "Marriage and early years in Canada". Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 15:04, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Hey Johannes Schade, below is my response:

• I added in Upper Canada politics section: "In 1834 York changed its name to Toronto and elected its first city council." I didn't add it in the lede because I don't think the name change and city council elections is important for the lede.
• I changed the wikilink to "movable type" and added text, so it now reads: "and threw its movable type, the letters a printing press uses to print documents, into the bay."
• {{Use Canadian English}} added.
• All templates now start with a capital letter.
• I looked at some literature biographies that were FAs, and none of them had an "introductory" sentence. I am hesitant to place one there because I don't know what I would say. I can't call the section "Works" because it is not a complete list (he has way too many publications to list them all here) but I changed it to "Notable works" because WP:BIB discourages using the word "bibliography"
• I do not know why the ref was sourced to the wrong page. It should have been page 14. I fixed it. I think the others are all correct, and I'm going to do a check of the refs, but I would appreciate it if you did more spot-checks to make sure the refs pointed to the correct page.
• You are right about the Dent citations: {{sfn}} says they should have a letter. Fixed.
• I thought the access date and URL-live were not necessary for printed works, too, but a regular FA reviewer added them when they did an edit of the article, so I am hesitant to remove it. I'll wait until the FAC to see if someone suggests their removal because it will be a pain to put them all back once removed. Via is necessary because sometimes the link used to access the journal is not the same one I used to read it for various reasons. I'm not sure what you mean by "Please use the |volume=" parameter for the volume number." I think I used that parameter for all the journals, and Dent's books were called "Volume 1" and "Volume 2" so I don't think I can take that out of the title.
• So the children of Mackenzie & Baxter is a difficult topic. I specifically looked for a source that listed the children in one place, said how many children they had or had a family tree, but I was unsuccessful. In the article the children's births do not use the same sources to verify the info because recent biographers only mentioned the births they considered important and I avoided using older works in the biography section. I'm not even 100% sure how many children they had because there are several unnamed girls at the beginning of their marriage and Mackenzie himself did not want to talk about them. That's why I did not put a "Personal life" sections about his marriage and children and instead integrated them into the article. I'll keep looking for a source.

Thanks again for doing a PR for this article. Z1720 (talk) 21:14, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Dear Z1720. Thanks for your response and article edits. Most of them fix the issue and go without comments. See below some comments on possibly remaining issues.

• York—Toronto. The lede mentions York and then Toronto. I still believe that it would be helpful to add "(Toronto)" or "(later Toronto)" after "York".

I changed the lede in paragraph 2, sentence 1 to: "In 1834 York became the city of Toronto and Mackenzie was chosen as its first mayor."

• {{Use Canadian English}} Please move it into its proper place. See MOS:LAYOUT.

 Done

• Works. You are right. Few articles have such an introductory sentence. I think your list of works and the whole section "Notable works" are fine.
• Access-date. I understand. I have a similar problem with the OCLC numbers that user Buidhe asks for in FA reviews. It did not happen to me but I found this looking through failed FA candidates. Buidhe seems to believe OCLCs are needed in all the books that do not have an ISBN. See his comments for the first failed FA review of the article John Neal (writer) in WP:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations/October 2020. Where did you encounter this problem with the access-date parameter supposed to be required?

Found ISBN numbers for older books on WorldCat. It wasn't so much a "problem" as an editor added them during a copyedit. I'm going to contact that editor and see what they say.

I removed the access dates for books and journals. I can add them back in if it becomes a problem. Z1720 (talk) 22:36, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

• Children. The article on MacKenzie in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/mackenzie_william_lyon_9E.html) says "In the summer of 1822 the rest of Edward Lesslie’s family came to Canada with Mackenzie’s mother and the girl she had chosen as William’s wife, Isabel Baxter (1805–73) of Dundee. Married in Montreal on 1 July, they were to have 13 children. Isabel was to make an ideal wife for Mackenzie, strong of body, yet submissive and uncomplaining through the many exigencies of his career."

 Added

Best regards, Johannes Schade (talk) 10:36, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

@Johannes Schade: Comments added above Z1720 (talk) 17:53, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Coemgenus and Johannes Schade for your comments. I have closed this PR to nominate it for GAN. I hope to nominate this for FAC in mid-April and I want to ping everyone who helped me with this article. If you do not want to be notified, please leave a message on my talk page. Z1720 (talk) 02:55, 27 February 2021 (UTC)