Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Kenilworth Castle

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Promoted EyeSerenetalk 09:45, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Kenilworth Castle[edit]

Nominator(s): Hchc2009 (talk)
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I am nominating this article for A-Class review because the article has passed a Good Article review, and I believe it has the potential to ultimately progress to FA status in due course. Additional "eyes-on" and quality assurance from the mil-hist specialists would assist in this process! Hchc2009 (talk) 08:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support Comments: looks quite impressive. I've not read through the whole article, though, so my comments are mainly focused on presentation:
    • according to the Featured article tools, there are two disambig links that should be located and rectified: [1];
    • no issues with external links (no action required);
    • in the lead, the first two sentences both start with the same words ("Kenilworth Castle"), you might consider starting the second sentence differently for variation;
    • I think that the the section title "Garden and Landscape" is incorrectly capitalised. Per WP:MOSHEAD, I think it should be "Garden and landscape";
    • there is some inconsistency in the presentation of values of distance, for instance "5 metres (17ft)", and then "nineteen metres (66ft)". These should probably be consistent and I'd suggest simply just using the {{convert}} as it will make the presentation consistent every time;
      • Sorted and I think is now fully consistent with the MOS.Hchc2009 (talk) 09:03, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • in the 16th century section, this clause probably needs a citation as it appears to be uncited: "...but Leicester's power and wealth, including monopolies and grants of new lands, depended ultimately on his remaining a favourite of the queen";
    • in the References section ther is a slight inconsistency in the presentation style, for instance Citation # 44 "Morris 2010, pp.32–3" as opposed to Citation #100 "Haynes, pp. 119–120" (32–3 compared to 119–120). These should be consistent;
    • if possible, publisher details should be added for the web citations (# 117, 118, and 120);
    • (suggestion only), you might consider adding in ISSNs for the journals and an OCLC number for the works that don't have ISBNs (e.g Cammiade) - these can be found through Worldcat. AustralianRupert (talk) 08:29, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • All my concerns have been addressed, so I am supporting this article. As it is quite long, I might have missed something so I will continue to read over the article over the next couple of days to see if anything else comes up. If it does, I will let you know. Good work, BTW. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:22, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • CommentSupport - I'm no expert on castles so just a few comments from me:
    • Use of terms like 'notable' (in the lead) should be avoided per WP:PEACOCK (maybe slight reword required);
    • The citation error checking tool reveals a couple of minor issues (Hull 2009, p.102. and HullWhitehorneMorrisP32, both reported as "Multiple references contain the same content")
    • Irregular caps here: "The outer bailey of Kenilworth castle", should this by Kenilworth Castle?;
    • although its not incorrect per se, AFAIK 'whilst' is considered archaic and are generally to be avoided (maybe use while instead); (see 4th para of Inner Court section);
    • Irregular caps again here I think: "Much of the right-hand court of Kenilworth castle is occupied"; and
    • This sentence appears to have a typo: "Elizabeth brought an entourage with of thirty-one barons..." particularly 'with of', I assume 'with her of thirty-one barons'. Anotherclown (talk) 02:15, 30 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Changes made, with the exception of the outer bailey: I think that as it the bailey is an integral part of the castle, the "of" is correct - but happy to be convinced otherwise! :)
  • See what you think of the altered lead.
  • Cheers! Hchc2009 (talk) 09:35, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good, happy to support. Well done. Anotherclown (talk) 11:00, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This is a very detailed and nicely written article and I think that it meets the A class criteria. My only comment is that the sentence which begins with "Kenilworth has also played an important historical role" is rather long and should be split. Nick-D (talk) 03:29, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sentence broken up as proposed - see what you think of the altered lead.
  • Cheers! Hchc2009 (talk) 09:35, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments. I made all the following edits (if there were edits to make); feel free to revert. - Dank (push to talk)
  • "Kenilworth Castle is a castle located in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England.": I have no problem with this sentence, given the preference of WP:LEAD to use the bolded, unlinked title of the page as the subject of the first sentence. I'm not sure how else you could put it. But it's worth mentioning that "X castle is a castle located in X" is repetitive, and we should keep an eye on the possibility of either challenging the suggestions of WP:LEAD or figuring out more creative ways to comply. - Dank (push to talk)
  • I made an edit to deal with the repetition, feel free to revert. - Dank (push to talk) 19:58, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "It has outstanding architecture, including buildings from Norman through to Tudor times, and has been described by architectural historian Anthony Emery as "the finest surviving example of a semi-royal palace of the later middle ages, significant for its scale, form and quality of workmanship".": WP:PEACOCK is mentioned above, which I take to mean "show, don't tell". I think the rest of the sentence says clearly enough that it has outstanding architecture, so I removed the first bit. But opinions go both ways on this; topic sentences are important. Feel free to revert. - Dank (push to talk) 17:19, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Kenilworth was also the scene of the removal of Edward II from the English throne; the French insult to Henry V in 1414, said by John Strecche to have encouraged the Agincourt campaign, and the Earl of Leicester's lavish reception of Elizabeth I in 1575.": two problems per the checklist ... see if you can find them, then look at my edit that dealt with them. - Dank (push to talk) 23:08, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the early 13th century Lunn's Tower, and the 14th century": I changed the comma to a semicolon. You have a long list here of items separated by semicolons; is it okay in BritEng to separate just one of the items by a comma? It's possible, but I'd be surprised. - Dank (push to talk) 16:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "timber framed": timber-framed.
  • "diamond shaped": diamond-shaped.
  • "replacing of Bolingbroke": replacing Bolingbroke.
  • "between 1373–80": I don't know if this applies to BritEng, but be aware that Chicago 6.78 asks for "and" instead of a dash.
  • "sending him a gift of tennis balls to Kenilworth": sending him a gift of tennis balls at Kenilworth
  • "The French aim ... spurred Henry's decision": the gift spurred Henry's decision.
  • "spent almost all its time between Kenilworth, Leicester and Tutbury Castle": divided almost all ...
  • "by when": by which time. - Dank (push to talk) 04:30, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Needs fixin:

  • I don't have a problem with "believed to be the longest siege" in the lead, but "believed to be probably the longest siege" later on is waffly enough that it really needs a quick in-text explanation or footnote telling us what the other viewpoints are. - Dank (push to talk) 20:07, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • "New Red Sandstone": in AmEng, it wouldn't be capitalized. I don't read BritEng articles as closely or make as many corrections because I don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe someone will grab a style guide and check this. - Dank (push to talk) 00:13, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've checked back on this; my immediate thought was that I'd got this wrong, but it seems that the capitalisation for New Red Sandstone is correct: because it is a particular regional variety of sandstone (as opposed to just being new, red sandstone I guess), it seems to get its own capitalisation in the geological literature (e.g. here, here or here.) Odd, I must admit, and I'd be interested if anyone out there knows more... Hchc2009 (talk) 09:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your first link is actually support for not capitalizing it, because they're only capitalizing it when they're referring to a particular formation (and they use a slightly different phrase, also capitalized, when they refer to a formation in for instance Connecticut), not the stone that comes from the formation. [Rule of thumb in AmEng: collective, mass and plural nouns are never proper nouns.] Also, it's impossible to even guess what the capitalization rules will be in style guides by surveying specialist literature. But it doesn't hurt readability here either way, and I'm out of my depth in BritEng. - Dank (push to talk) 14:54, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • At the first occurrence of "the Clintons", I have no idea who they are. - Dank (push to talk) 16:26, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What's the thinking behind this edit? Nev1 (talk) 18:46, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Nev. See "Series" at the checklist, and in part it's also "Consistency", since I changed the one semicolon to a comma. This is a trick, if you want to call it that, that's been around a long time: you can make a complicated series less complicated if you put the longer or more complex element last. That sentence is now easily understood with just commas. The cost here is that it's no longer chronological, and lack of chronology is sometimes a problem I harp on, but it's not a problem here. - Dank (push to talk) 19:24, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The chronology was the issue I was thinking of. I can see the most complicated element has been shifted to the end of the sentence but think it was easily understood before. Now the thing that leaps out, to me at least, is the bouncing around in time. I think this should be left to Hchc's discretion. Nev1 (talk) 19:30, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't poke around in British English style guides. If anyone has a cite, that would be great. - Dank (push to talk) 19:37, 1 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Oxford Style Manual might be one that could be used here. It might be available through a library somewhere. I'll have a look, but the online price is too steep for me, though, on my Army pension so I won't be able to purchase it unfortunately. AustralianRupert (talk) 00:10, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in favour of the original chronological version for clarity, but I've no style citation to back it up! :) Hchc2009 (talk) 09:00, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I restored your order, but not your punctuation; see what you think. - Dank (push to talk) 14:18, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "in a similar to the arrangement": a typo here somewhere.
  • "The building was intended to juxtapose with the ancient great tower": "juxtapose" is transitive in AmEng; also, I'm not sure exactly what you're saying.
  • I've tweaked the wording - see if it works! Hchc2009 (talk) 09:00, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester", "his brother, Edmund Crouchback", "Thomas, Earl of Lancaster", "his wife, Isabella of France", "Henry of Grosmont, the Duke of Lancaster", "Many castles, especially royal castles", "Robert, Earl of Leicester": all of these would require a comma after per Chicago 6.17, "Commas in pairs".
  • "The line of trees planted that cuts across the base court today is a relatively modern": I'd lose the "planted".
  • "first-storey": probably no hyphen.
  • I went through several pages of a Google search on "athlant, mythology" and can't find any reference to a mythological "athlant", other than pages that refer to the statues at Kenilworth. If I were writing, I'd dig in and see if I could come up with some classical reference, and if not, I probably wouldn't mention it.
  • "Thomas built the first great hall at the castle between 1314 and constructed": something's missing here.
  • Yep - I'm now searching around the house to double-check the second date! Hchc2009 (talk) 09:00, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "On his death Blanche of Lancaster inherited the castle; Blanche married John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III, their union and combined resources made John the second richest man in England to the king himself.": I think I see a comma splice just before "their union". Also, AmEng would need a "next" before "to the king himself".
  • "(approximately £1.25m–£1.7m in today's terms)": "in today's terms" is a phrase to avoid per WP:DATED (and the same language is in WP:MOS). "in 2010 pounds" or "figured in 2010 pounds" would work for me. Btw, the inflation template is giving me a very different number: £500 in 1563 is: £{{formatprice|{{inflation|UK|500|1563|2010|r=-4}}}} or £130,000. - Dank (push to talk) 04:30, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "When Charles became king, he gave the castle to his wife, Henrietta Maria, bestowed the stewardship on Robert Carey, earl of Monmouth, and after his death, Carey's sons, Henry and Thomas.": See how the series is nonparallel?
  • Done. Beautiful writing, and very easy to follow. - Dank (push to talk) 05:09, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • P.S. I'm going to add the "between X–Y" stuff to the todo list ("and" instead of dash), per conversations at WT:MOS a couple of years ago (I don't have a cite but I can find it if I dig), and per Chicago 6.78, in the absence of guidance from a British style guide. - Dank (push to talk) 14:53, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cheers! Will run through these in a bit. In the meantime, the different inflation figure is because the inflation template uses the Retail Price Index (e.g. how much has bundle of household goods like a loaf of bread changed in price between the 1560's and 2009). For wages and incomes, or larger projects like castles, and across longer periods of time, the RPI is usually a bad comparison, and you'd be recommended to use something like an Average Earnings figure (e.g. how much does has a typical wage changed between the 1560's and 2009); this gives you the higher figure. Go back much beyond the 16th century, and the comparison falls to bits entirely because of the different role of money in the economy. I'll add a footnote explaining it. Hchc2009 (talk) 08:52, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've been asked to comment here by Dank. I think there are two issues at stake. The first is that RPI (CPI in the US) is a bad proxy for large scale purchases like castles (or, following MILHIST, ships, armies and so forth). The second is that certain measures of inflation fall apart along a long time scale. I'm almost completely convinced of the latter proposition. Partially because the purpose of inflating figures generally and the inflation template specifically is to provide a sensible number for readers to anchor expectations on. Using nominal prices where real prices should be given (e.g. the sale price of a car in the UK or the US in 1955) leads the reader astray in a very subtle fashion. But the further back we go, the larger the potential for errors becomes and the larger the tradeoff between informing the reader and potentially misleading the reader becomes. As Hchc says, if we use the RPI/CPI and go backwards too far the calculation becomes nonsensical because the basket of goods changes so radically. Additionally, the issue of sampling error becomes important the further back we go from 1900 (sampling error which may bias our displayed real price one way or the other, there is no guarantee that sampling error nets out at the end (See DeLong's comment on GDP growth measurement error for a similar example). So for long time scales we should be wary of auto-generated real prices. But I'm less convinced of the argument that retail pricing should generally not be used to deflate large sale prices. For state projects like Kenilworth Castle, this may make a great deal of sense. We have a recorded outlay for the castle itself, but no amount of treasure would have pried it from its owners at the time of purchase. It wasn't exactly like a bag of dog food or an automobile which could be traded in a relatively liquid fashion. But for more recent large projects, the worry is overstated. There are some differences in what is measured by the CPI and a broader measure of inflation, but the basic intuition we want to provide the reader is served by using the CPI--we want to show the reader what the rough equivalent in value the money spent on a particular project would be today. Not the value of a particular project itself. The two are not the same! Where we have a consistent series with which the price can be adjusted we can do that using almost any reasonably accepted measure.
  • So what's the takeaway? Long time periods and radically changing use of money/markets and spells of poor record keeping present problems for using simple conversions to real dollars or pounds. The type or purchase in itself doesn't necessitate the exclusion of a particular measure of inflation (particularly when that exclusion results in just reporting nominal prices). I know this comment is more general than it needs to be, but I keep seeing this crop up in MILHIST discussions and FACs. Thanks. Protonk (talk) 17:38, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The issue certainly deserves decent discussion, and as you say goes beyond just this article. The source I'm citing for the conversion specifically argues in favour of the nominal for this purpose, incidentally.
  • My personal view is that I'd prefer for Wikipedia not to use modern, inflation-based equivalent figures at all before a certain point (18-19th century, for preference), and instead give a suitable equivalent from the period being discussed (e.g. compare one castle's value with another castle's, or the fee paid by a lord of the period, or a purchase price of an equivalent estate at the time). Taking two examples from this article, the £500 being worth £1.2m today feels a little high to me (but £100,000 at RPI feels somewhat too low), but the assessment value of £10,000 for the castle in 1588 being worth the equivalent of £23m feels sort of right.
  • I'm torn, because on the one hand I can see why a casual reader would want an indicator of some sort, on the other hand few of the academic texts I tend to use would give a modern equivalent price of any sort, RPI or nominal, for example, for exactly the reasons we're discussing here. Without wanting to lose a sense of perspective (!), it feels almost as though we're straying into original research by trying to produce a figure that the academics themselves often refused (for good reasons) to generate.
  • One option might to go for a range, e.g. say "worth between x and y", with RPI and nominal given together? Hchc2009 (talk) 18:15, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree wholeheartedly that figures for prices past a date where measures of inflation are untrustworthy (for any of the reasons given above) are best offered with a comparison to a contemporary purchase. The great thing about that presentation is that we often won't have to worry about OR--a lot of the great history books on subjects like this will offer such a comparison themselves to give the reader a sense of scale. Once we start picking among indicators of basically equal quality for a price which sounds right we are running into two problems. First, that's probably OR. Second, we run into the issue I discussed on my talk page; we don't actually have a consistent idea of how the different series are cointegrated and so we can't generate a reasonable test statistic and therefore probably shouldn't offer a range or an interpolation. Lastly, the growth of prices and values over time is very complex. That castle may have been worth the equivalent of 23m or it may have been worth much less as building the same building today might only cost 500 thousand pounds--converting nominal to real prices over long periods of profound growth invariably forces us to mix price and value and the result is messy. So yeah, you're generally correct with regard to older subjects and unique situations. We ought to avoid converting to real prices without some serious thought. But for many cases in the anglosphere post 1800, conversion is (probably) ok and will likely avoid leading the reader astray (especially when the conversion is made explicit by noting the nominal price as well). Protonk (talk) 19:35, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like Protonk's reasoning; I'd prefer we add something to WP:MILMOS about not converting figures in pounds that are centuries old. - Dank (push to talk) 19:38, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • As this effects the type of article I sometimes work on I thought I'd chip in. It's nice to have a modern equivalent for the reader to give them a sense of how much a hundred or a thousand pounds was, the problem is finding those figures. As Hchc says, very few works on the subject of castles use conversions to modern equivalents. I vaguely remember coming across one instance, which surprised me (I can't remember where), but then I realised the book itself was a good 30 or 40 years old in any case and the sum no longer relevant to the present. Then there's the problem of which index to use; money was spent on wages as well as procuring materials. Finally, it is only really royal castles for which records of work and expenditure survive (and are not always complete), and others rely on best guesses. Often (not always as some older articles I've worked on include conversions) I just don't include modern equivalents because of the problem of choosing which figures. The ideal way round this would be to put it in relative terms, as Hchc suggests. Nev1 (talk) 20:00, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think you guys are on to something with your suggestions of relative terms. Do we have a list of fortifications that includes their costs? Then instead of using our OR, the reader could gauge the prices and values of the castles by doing their own comparisons. - Dank (push to talk) 20:16, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Drifting steadily off the topic of Kenilworth Castle, but this is an interesting suggestion so...) I don't know of any such list on Wikipedia, and compiling one might be tricky. Records aren't always complete, any such list would pretty much have to be about royal castles but if it could be done it would provide a useful yardstick for readers to refer to. Something like this would be quite an undertaking and might make for an interesting dissertation, but it's conceivable something could be done for Wikipedia. The rolls don't always record what money was spent on, and in some cases may have constituted maintenance and running costs. Whereas a dissertation would obvious have to refer directly to the Pipe Rolls, I suppose we could use the secondary sources which state things such as between "13xx and 13xx £xyz was spent on building the castle". Castles often underwent several important phases of construction, so a castle could crop up several times on this theoretical list. It would also have to be arranged chronologically. I might try to rig something up in a sandbox with a couple of examples to see how it could work.

    Even without such a list some general comparative notes can be included, for example the article on the Tower of London (no inflation conversions in the article) says "From 1216 to 1227 nearly £10,000 was spent on the Tower of London; in this period, only the work at Windsor Castle cost more (£15,000)." Nev1 (talk) 20:38, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I finished up. By my count, we've got everything now except Nev's comments below, "between 1314 and constructed", "believed to be probably the longest", and "today's terms" (and the conversion). - Dank (push to talk) 19:25, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • We're getting there! :)
  • "probably the longest" - have gone for a direct quote in the end.
    • You're probably working on this already, but any significant quote is going to need attribution in the text, such as "According to Oxford historian blah-blah" - Dank (push to talk) 21:05, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • "main approach" (from Nev1's comments) is in.
  • I still can't find my copy of Morris, which is somewhere in the house, so am still looking for that second date on the hall building. Grrr.
  • Will tackle "today's" terms in a bit. Hchc2009 (talk) 19:57, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I still can't find Morris in my house, but I'm pretty sure he gives the second date as 1317, so I have added that in and will double check when I find it!
  • Price comparison has been clarified in three footnotes, giving it by RPI, income and by comparison with other Elizabeth figures. See what you think!
  • Hchc2009 (talk) 09:36, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support per standard disclaimer. - Dank (push to talk) 12:45, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments
  • "main entrance route to the castle" would "main approach to the castle" be simpler and still carry the same meaning?
  • As far as visitor numbers are concerned, they're not necessary for the article to be comprehensive – it already goes into details about modern use and tourists etc – but if you're interested figures for 2009 are here.
  • Maybe link to Caerphilly and/or Bodiam in the see also section? As they're well known partly because of their water defences I thought they may be worth including, but where do you draw the line? Anyway, whether you link them or not is completely up to you.
I like the current opening sentence. Sometimes I find myself writing something like "Caernarfon Castle is a castle in Caernarfon" which, as Dank says, just seems so obvious and repetitive. Sometimes that formula works, eg: Littledean Camp. It's tricky, but an approach I take is to avoid repeating "castle", calling it a "medieval building" or something similar (eg: Brougham Castle). This makes it implicit that it's a castle; this may become problematic when you're dealing with structures that have castle in the name but are something else, but in those cases I clarify that despite being called a castle it's something else (eg: Maiden Castle, Dorset starts with "Maiden Castle is an Iron Age hill fort"). Nev1 (talk) 18:17, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support My points are minor, Dank says his points have been addressed so I'm supporting this article. Nev1 (talk) 23:51, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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