Talk:Evesham/Archive 2

GA nomination

There are a number of short sections, and the sections themselves could be better grouped. The lead needs development per WP:Lead. There are a number of statements that could be queried, but are unsourced - such as "Every year there are asparagus auctions", "Further features of local language give rise to variations in the pronunciation of the town's name", "The nearest major airport is Birmingham International", etc. The Notable people section needs writing up in prose. The history of the foundation is presenting legend as fact. Though the foundation is shrouded in legend, this source does give more information, and does make it clearer what is fact and what is fiction. The Battle of Evesham is significant enough for there to be more information about it - it should be mentioned in the lead, and should have a section on it. I think there is a fair amount of work to do, so I don't want to take this on as reviewer at the moment. SilkTork *^YES! 17:21, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

One or more contributors to this article may not wholly agree with one or more of the points above. As you were not asked to make this summary, other reviewers may have other opinions and may be prepared to make a correct GA summary on the required template, and put the article on hold for the improvements. Thank you for your interest. --Kudpung (talk) 07:09, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Evesham/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Dana boomer (talk) 14:08, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi! Thank you for the kind invitation to review this article. First, let me say that some of the comments that SilkTork posted on the talk page are quite valid, and should probably have been given more attention than the rather dismissive reply they received. Just because they didn't place them on the "official" review page does not mean that they are not valid, and editors should be willing to at least consider all comments in their quest to improve the article. Initial comments shortly...

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   •  Fixed The lead should be expanded. For an article of over 30 kb, two large paragraphs or three medium-sized ones are adequate. Not the one medium one and two almost non-existant ones that are currently there.
   • History section - please put this in chronological order! It jumps from 1086 to 1265 to 1149 to 1930 to 1603! Also, did nothing happen between 1645 and 1930?
   • The majority of the article goes into exquisite detail about even the most mundane details of contemporary life, but then gives one sentence to a major battle (Evesham was the site of a major battle—the Battle of Evesham,...) and leaves it at that. Is nothing more known about this battle?
      Fixed The battle has a main article. Some elements have been borrowed and paraphrased, with a link to the main article. The battle section is not too long because the main battle article is not very long either.
   •  Fixed(expanded) The latter half of the article is made up almost completely of short, choppy paragraphs and sections that do a disservice to the information they are trying to present. Many of these could (and should) be combined, which will make the article flow better and be more intuitive to read. For example, the Sport and Media section could be combined with the Culture section, and many of the subsections within Culture don't need their own subsections - just use transition sentences to flow between one idea and the next.
   •  Fixed The tag in the Notable people section needs to be dealt with. Although I have no problem with the format as a list, I would like to see some sort of opening sentence or two tying these people together.
   •  Fixed The Language section seems to be more of an etymology section or pronunciation section than a section about the language. You say the local dialect is "distinctive", but then go into a discussion of various pronunciations of the town's name. What about the local dialect is "distinctive"? Have there been any linguistic studies on it? What is it related to? How did it develop? Is it similar to dialects used in other local towns, and is it just used in Evesham/the surrounding countryside?

   • No further information is available from other sources regarding the accent. I am from 20 miles from the area and I do not find that it differs much at all from the genera, local, rural Herefordshire/Worcestershire accent that is spoken for example in Malvern, Upton-on-Severn, and Tewkesbury Pershore. (Kudpung)
   • I found and added some citations on the dialect. It does appear that it was distinctive within its local geographic region. However by the time attention was paid to this particular dialect it was already in decline. This fits with my overall impression regarding English dialects, that there was considerably more diversity prior to various developments in transport and related infrastructure (esp road & rail, and - on an international scale - sea and air). Couple this with standardised education, and now with increasing electronic communication, and you have the world we currently live in, where the number of dialects we see is significantly less than ever before in human history. Thus, with dialect as with any other phenomenon, we cannot extrapolate from the world we now observe to the world which once was. We must rely on whatever records we can find from the world that once was to get the context of that world. Palaeontologists and anthropologists are particularly cognisant of this. Wotnow (talk) 21:47, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   •  Fixed There is one dead link (already marked) that needs to be fixed.
   • What is reference #12? It has a retrieval date and part of a link, but no actual web link.

    Fixed Became ref #11 as at this revision.Wotnow (talk) 11:41, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

   •  Fixed What makes ref #22 (Beermad) a reliable source?

   Replaced Beermad ref (now #21 as at this edit) with Town Council ref. Wotnow (talk) 12:45, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

   •  Fixed What makes ref #32 (Pathetic motorways) a reliable source?

   Replaced Pathetic motorways ref (now #31 as at this edit) with ref from Motorways Archive. Straightforward descriptive, with research leads for tracking down original documents. Wotnow (talk) 13:50, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

   •  Fixed What makes ref #42 (Steam index) a reliable source?

   The Steam index ref (now #41) is detailed, very well referenced, looks well researched, and does actually look reliable. Indeed I'm reasonably impressed with it. A hardcore researcher could glean a considerable amount of material from this. Wotnow (talk) 14:05, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Here are a few of my initial comments. There is a good bit of work that is needed, and so I am putting the article on hold to allow these issues to be addressed. I haven't had a thorough look at prose yet, and more issues will possibly rise to the surface as the ones above are taken care of. Dana boomer (talk) 14:38, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

More comments

• History section, "According to legend, Eof went to Egwin, who shared the vision and was moved to establish a Benedictine abbey dedicated to St Mary on the site which was built by 709 A.D." Doesn't the contradict the sentence above, where you say that Egwin followed the vision to Eof? Also, needs a ref (according to legend? says who?), and AD/BC do not have punctuation, per WP:MOSNUM.

This is being fixed. It's a similar confusion to that of the founding of Malvern, where there was also a shepherd or a hermit credited with either the foundation of the town or the abbey, and a monk or a bishop who later actually had the monastery built, from which the town is also supposed to have developed. Different sources report the stories differently - I'm not sure if it's Wikipedia's job to sort out the mess of 1,000 year old legend, but we do our best with Englnd where recorded history goes back over more than two thousand years since the Roman occupation.

• History section, "An entry in the Great Domesday Book..." Some of the names in this list could probably be linked without too much digging.
•  Fixed Battle section, if the battle was a massacre, how was the outcome not decisive? Or do you mean that while we know who won the battle, the battle didn't end the war? This should be made more clear.

The battle did not end the war, which continued for another two years.

• Major issue - Copyright violations, really?!?

•  Fixed (removed) Article: "King Charles I stayed in the town in 1644, probably in one of the town houses in Bridge Street that were crown property." Source: "Charles stayed in the town in 1644, probably in one of the town houses in Bridge Street that were crown property."
• Article: "The town received a royal charter in 1603." Source: "The town only first received a royal charter in 1603,"
• Article: "After the Dissolution of the Monasteries of 1540 to the end of the 17th century, the town's economy depended on the cloth trade, especially trade in finished articles – caps, collars and gloves." Source: "from the Dissolution of 1540 to the end of the seventeenth century, the town depended on the cloth trade, and particularly the specialist trades in finished articles – caps, collars and gloves."

 Fixed 'removed) * Article: Source:"Along the river were two corn-mills and a mill for extracting oil from linseed. There were two factories making ribbon." "There are two corn-mills, a mill for extracting oil from linseed, and two ribbon manufactories."

However, this appears to be from:
'Everdon - Ewen', A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 191-195. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=50952 Date accessed: 18 January 2011.
It's taken online from British History Online and is out of copyright. The website' offers read-made citations to use in Wikipedia per Wikipedia format.

This is from only checking parts of a couple of sources! Every single reference needs to be gone through and checked, and my first instinct is to fail this article right now. However, I will keep it on hold for the moment, to give you some time to respond. Dana boomer (talk) 15:49, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

None of the current four editors would have knowingly made any copyvios. We did not create the article from scratch and there is a lot of old stuff in it. Assuming good faith, each of us has probably though that one of the others had systematically been through checked all the sources. I will do this now. --Kudpung (talk) 08:40, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

KP, can you make a note here on the talk page of what you remove? There is some good content there that I would hate to lose - although clearly it needs re-writing. Dana, what is the threshold for copyvio? While some of these sections clearly fall foul, others are short, factual sentences (e.g. "The town received a royal charter in 1603."). While we can rewrite them, it tends to generate rather convoluted language. I think AP claim a violation at two sentences (although even this is rather untested). GyroMagician (talk) 14:47, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

You are correct that things like "The town received a royal charter in 1603" are kind of on the edge between copyvio and non-copyvio. However, it's really better to try and reword it even a little bit - "In 1603, the town was given a royal charter" or something or the sort. Many of them that I saw though weren't two sentences, but also were most definitely copyvios - the King Charles I sentence and the Dissolution of the Monasteries sentence above are prime examples. Dana boomer (talk) 14:59, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

How is the reference checking going? Also, please note that I'm not expecting you to just remove all copied sections - just paraphrase them. If you remove all of the copyvio areas, it's going to leave the article rather incomplete. Dana boomer (talk) 22:05, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Is work still ongoing on this? If I don't see any response/work in the next couple of days, I'm going to have to fail the article. Dana boomer (talk) 15:16, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Looks like it will have to be failed, no work on the page plus no note here. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 15:23, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

see here. An enormous amount of work was done following Dana's initial comments but RL got in the way and for some reason this page is not registering on my watchlist. I'll have to finish the improvements alone, and I will have this done in the next day or two. Kudpung (talk) 18:24, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, just as long as it gets done soon; article's been under review long enough. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 16:23, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Removed sections

Sorry, they were on my hard disc to see if I could do anything with them, I meant to put them here but I got side tracked by a couple of messages on my talk page. Here they are:

This section:

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries of 1540 to the end of the 17th century, the town's economy depended on the cloth trade, especially trade in finished articles – caps, collars and gloves.<ref name="Cromwell"/> The town received a royal charter in 1603.<ref name="Cromwell"/> As an important stage on the route from [[Oxford]], it served as a royal garrison during the [[English Civil War]]. The town remained in the hands of the [[Royalists]]<ref name="Cromwell"/> until May 1645 when it was taken and occupied by [[Edward Massie|Colonel Edward Massey]] with a large force of [[Oliver Cromwell|Cromwellian]] troops from the garrison in Gloucester and remained in [[Roundhead|Parliamentary]] possession for the rest of the [[Interregnum (England)|Interregnum]].<ref name="Cromwell">{{cite web |url=http://www.olivercromwell.org/evesham.htm |title=Cromwellian Britain - Evesham, Worcestershire |publisher=The Cromwell Association |accessdate=8 October 2010}} </ref>

and this section:

During the 19th century market gardens on rich fertile soil were established around the town, and horticulture became the main industry. Asparagus and other vegetables were extensively cultivated. Along the river were two corn-mills and a mill for extracting oil from linseed. There were two factories making ribbon.<ref name=tde/>

Kudpung (talk) 15:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Update

There is still some major work that needs to happen on this article, so I'm wondering about the main editors' thoughts on closing the review and letting the article be re-nominated when the editors have a chance to put more time into it. Currently, the history section is missing the last several hundred years, there are still unreferenced areas, mis-spellings and poor grammar/punctuation are easily found, the lead still needs to be expanded, and these are just issues that I found in a quick scan. This review has been open for more than a month, and the editors don't seem to have the time to devote to it at this point, as evidenced by the non-existent work since the day after I brought up serious copyvios. Dana boomer (talk) 18:04, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Close it if you wish. The article was nominated in good faith but unfortunately RL got in the way for two of the major contributors/editors as can be seen from the link above, and my talk page header; I'm still editing, but on a stab-and-dab basis from an Internet connection in a remote part of Asia that does not hold for more than a couple of minutes at a time, and I won't be home to my broadband until Saturday 19 Feb. It has absolutely nothing to do with coinciding with comments about possible copyvios, and I find the emphasis unfortunate. --Kudpung (talk) 19:13, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Allright, I'll close the review and the article can be renominated when you all have time. My apologies if you thought I was accusing you of bad faith, but from my point of view, editing stopped completely very soon after I brought up the copyvio comments, with no comments on the page for over two weeks. I wouldn't have blamed you for losing interest in the article after having copyright violations pointed out in what you probably thought was a close-to-GA-status article. I understand that you were not the one to add the violations, but unfortunately, you have been left to clean them up. Dana boomer (talk) 20:11, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Starting the grand tidy-up

Hello again Dana, and thanks for your initial comments. I agree with you, this article will take some work, but let's see how far we can get. I've made a start on the history section - the paragraphs are now in chronological order, and I've folded the abbey section into the main text. I think we still need some expansion here - as I understand it, Evesham was once one of the major abbeys in the country, but I don't remember where I read that (!). Does anyone have a source?  Done

I think we should also say something about the 'Evesham Custom'. It is relevant because it explains why Evesham became such a centre for market gardening. There is a good description here, although I'm not sure this counts as a reliable source. Again, does anyone have good sources?  Done

For the notable people section, an introductory sentence is difficult - all these people really have in common is Evesham! I've looked around a few pages for other towns - most simply give a list with no introduction. In fact, the only one I could find with an introduction is Malvern, Worcestershire, written by Kudpung. GyroMagician (talk) 08:10, 10 January 2011 (UTC)  Done

Thanks for lending a hand Gyro. I'm out of town (back in hospital for a couple of days) but I'll address the issues too as soon as I can locate a WiFi. Looks as if Dana has already run the link-check script, but I'll run it again adn see what I come up with. I'll also try to sort out the new refs I added a couple of days ago.Kudpung (talk) 08:54, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Excuse my butting in but I thought I'd add a bit to the History section. And a ref or two Ref4 has quite a bit of useful info.--J3Mrs (talk) 18:31, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello J3Mrs, and welcome to the party! Please keep butting in -- I like your additions, and there's plenty to do :-) GyroMagician (talk) 22:34, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

There is an awful lot of information missing from this article, are there no landmarks? Such a section could mention the wood framed buildings, old bridges etc. What about parliamentary representation, population, public services?. It seems to be a very interesting place and I have found out a few bits without too much trouble. As for the notable people, why not turn it into its own list article and link to this one, mentioning any really notables in relevant sections. I personally dislike these sections but they do seem to attract other editors.

Yep, I think we still have a lot missing, but it's growing now. For notable poeple, I prefer to have a list on the main page, rather than a separate article. I'd never read a separate page, but I do sometimes stumble across someone interesting while reading about a place.

I know we're trying to expand the article, but I'd like to chop some. Currently, the road transport paragraph reads:

The town is on the once planned line of the Strensham to Solihull motorway, linking the M50 to the M42.[29] However, in 1974 the scheme was dropped in favour of widening the M5 through Worcestershire.[30]

Do we really need to mention a motorway that wasn't built 37 years ago? I vote for cutting both sentences - does anyone disagree? GyroMagician (talk) 22:29, 11 January 2011 (UTC)  Done

I agree, it would be better to include info on Public transport.--J3Mrs (talk) 23:28, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I know I'm a bit late here, but I concur. Although I found a citation for this, the sole purpose of that exercise was to replace a contentious citation with something more substantive. I'll often address that issue separately from the issue of "should content X be in article Y" for a number of reasons. Among them are: (1) oftentimes people just utilise whatever citation they can find, and since I'm particularly good at finding information, part of my task is to demonstrate how to do this; (2) having found a more reliable citation, the question can then be addressed of whether information X belongs. One reason (but not the only reason) for this approach is that sometimes the standard of information in a Wikipedia article is an artifact of the source/s utilised. By improving the source, one allows a broader approach to the 'keep/don't keep' question, by allowing for expansion, improvement, or alteration of the text in question, if the desire is to keep. Further to this, oftentimes I may edit an article on something that is closer to other editor's hearts than to mine. This being the case, I prefer to expand on the options and leave some sorts of editing and dialogues alone. Wotnow (talk) 23:39, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your grand efforts so far. I've now spent a day on this (see history), and can't think what else I can do to improve it. I think all Dana's points have been addressed - let's not try to find new solutions to problems that we haven't got, and see if it can pass GA by the end of this week. Kudpung (talk) 09:17, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The transport section needs some work, but I'm not sure how to untangle it. The historic facts about the roads and railway formation are interesting, but make the section difficult to read. The transport section is usually a very terse description of the transport links available in a town - I think it works well that way. Maybe these facts should move up to the history section? GyroMagician (talk) 16:35, 17 January 2011 (UTC)