Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Priory of Sion/archive2

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 not promoted by User:SandyGeorgia 01:36, 23 September 2008 [1].

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Priory of Sion

Nominator: Loremaster (talk)

previous FAC (18:17, 6 May 2008)

After having resolved all the issues raised in the previous FAC, I'm renominating Priory of Sion for featured article because it is well-written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral and stable. Furthermore, there has been tremendous popular interest in this topic due to the international success of the book The Da Vinci Code and the film based on it. -- Loremaster (talk) 22:24, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:MSH, there's a lot of "the" in the section headings. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:41, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

True but I don't see anything in the Manual of Style that recommends that we should avoid that. --Loremaster (talk) 23:01, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

It's right there: "A, an and the are normally avoided as the first word (Economy of the Second Empire, not The economy of the Second Empire), unless part of a proper noun (The Hague)." SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:06, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I missed that. However, some of section headings are actually the title of books which include the word "the". So I have removed the four that were not. --Loremaster (talk) 00:59, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• Image comments - all images are free (public domain), or, if nonfree, low-resolution, with author, source, and fair use rationale. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 23:34, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Comments from Dabomb87 (talk · contribs):

• "In 1993 Plantard had to acknowledge that both lists were fraudulent when he was investigated by a judge during the Pelat Affair." "had to acknowledge"-->acknowledge.
• Date linking is now deprecated by the MOS. I expect Tony1 will fix that with the script soon enough.
• "Numerous articles contained in its journal Circuit written by a number of different people may be evidence that the association had several members." This sentence needs a cleanup, it has redundancies and doesn't flow.

I'll have more comments later. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:55, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

• Replaced "had to acknowledge" with "acknowledged".
• Removed all date linking.
• Deleted entire sentence rather than cleaning it up because one source puts in doubt its veracity.

--Loremaster (talk) 02:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

More comments Sorry for taking so long.

• There is plenty of overlinking. (For example, Knights Templar)
• "The letters describe schemes to combat criticisms of their various allegations and ways they would make up new allegations to try to keep the hoax alive."
• "They adapted, and used to their advantage, the earlier claims put forward by Nöel Corbu that a Catholic priest named Bérenger Saunière had supposedly discovered these seemingly ancient parchments inside a pillar while renovating his church in Rennes-le-Château in 1891." What a long sentence!
• "He also adopted "Et in Arcadia ego ...", a slightly altered version of a Latin phrase that most famously appears as the title of two paintings by Nicolas Poussin, as the motto of both his family and the Priory of Sion,[16] because the tomb which appears in these paintings resembled one in the Les Pontils area near Rennes-le-Château." "most famously"—unless there are more than one famous instances of the phrase, most is not necessary.
• "...which had been founded in the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the First Crusade in 1099 and later absorbed by the Jesuits in 1617."
• "The first issue of the journal is dated 27 May 1956..."—"is dated"-->was printed on.
• "he Priory of Sion is considered dormant by the subprefecture because it has indicated no activities since 1956." "indicated no activities"-->been inactive.
• "Nevertheless, many conspiracy theorists persist in believing still believe that the Priory of Sion is an age-old cabal which acts as a power behind the throne while concealing a subversive secret." "while concealing a subversive secret" doesn't belong in this sentence. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:33, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Comments This is a very interesting article, I enjoyed reading it and did not know about this hoax (I was not into the DaVinci Code thing) - very enlightening. However, I noticed that more than a few of the references are to books or magazines with French titles. I am not sure we are allowed to use non-English sources for an English speaking Wikipedia article. It seems that there are more than a few decent English speaking references - can you use more of these and eliminate reliance to the French speaking sources or do the French speaking sources have English translations that you could note in the reference? Perhaps a way around it would be to provide more quotes from the French sounding sources if they have English translations. Otherwise I thought the article was very well done and more than a little bit interesting :) NancyHeise ^talk 15:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

This might be difficult since the contributor who was our expert on references was banned from Wikipedia for violating talk page guidelines... --Loremaster (talk) 03:11, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• I'm a little concerned about the POV-ness of describing Plantard as a megalomaniac via the phrase "delusions of grandeur". The term is sourced to a religious expert, not a psychiatrist, and apparently megalomania is not considered a distinct mental disorder anyhow. I suggest either making the attribution far more explicit, or else dropping that particular phrase.
• The WP:LEAD refers to POS as "a mythical secret society plotting to install the Merovingian dynasty". But this neglects the feminist repackaging that Dan Brown put on it... perhaps both versions should be mentioned in the lead. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 09:06, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

• We can simply delink the phrase "delusions of grandeur" from the Megalomania article.
• In light of how convoluted the subject of the Priory of Sion is, we've felt that the lead of the article should remain as general as possible to avoid readers unfamiliar with the subject becoming confused from the very beginning. However, I will rephrase that sentence to focus on the common description of the Priory of Sion.

--Loremaster (talk) 09:44, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Comments by jimfbleak I'll read this through properly if I get time, but a cursory glance indicated that there are too many "padding" words, such as however, furthermore and the like, which serve no useful purpose jimfbleak (talk) 15:08, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

There are 8 "however", 2 "furthermore", 2 "therefore" and 1 "nevertheless". I would argue that there aren't that many and they do serve a useful purpose by punctuating sentences. --Loremaster (talk) 19:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Comments

• Per the MOS, curly quotes shouldn't be used on block quotations.
• Current ref 5 (The Secret of the Priory of Sion) has the publisher in the link title. It should be listed separately.
• Not required, but it is nice if non-English printed sources say what language they are in. I note that most of the printed sources appear to be in French?
• Current ref 9 (Bradley, Ed "The Priory of Sion..) is lacking a publisher.
• I believe that a number of the printed sources are lacking page numbers, since I suspect that most of the sources being used are books?
• Decide if you're going to list authors with their last name first or their first names first. Currently, it's a mix.
• Current ref 39 (Miller, Linda) is lacking a publisher.

Otherwise sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 19:04, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose by karanacs. This is a very interesting article, but it has some MOS issues that need to be fixed and the prose needs a bit more work. I've listed examples of issues I've found below.
  • I'm not entirely sure what this is saying "founders and signatories inscribed with their aliases were Pierre Plantard, also known as "Chyren", and André Bonhomme, also known as "Stanis Bellas". " - does this mean that these men signed both their names and aliases to the registration documents?
  • This sentence reads very awkwardly: "Towards the end of 1956 the association had aims to forge links with the local Catholic Church of the area involving a school bus service run by both the Priory of Sion and the church of Saint-Joseph in Annemasse"
  • This sentence says "journal Circuit was indicated as a news bulletin of an "organization for the defence of the rights and the freedom of affordable housing" rather than for the promotion of chivalry-inspired charitable work. " - but we haven't heard about the journal yet. Is it an official publication of the Priory? If so, that should be spelled out.
  • " as of last report, there is no one who is currently alive who has official permission to use the name" - does this mean that Plantard is deceased now? That should probably also be pointed out.
  • The prose needs some massaging. I see multiple sentences where clauses aren't quite situated properly. For example, " Also in the 1960s, Plantard began writing a manuscript and had a series of medieval parchments forged by de Chérisey which contained encrypted messages that referred to the Priory of Sion."- the "which contained..." claus is placed immediately after "forged by de Cherisey", but is actually referring to the parchments, I believe. I would likely rewrite this as "During the same decade, Plantard commissioned de Cherisey to forge a series of medieval parchments. These documents contained encrypted messages that referred to the Priory of Sion." There are other places in the article where sentences should be reworded or reorganized a bit to make the clauses stay closer to the nouns they are describing.
  • "They adapted, and used to their advantage, the earlier claims put forward by Nöel Corbu that a Catholic priest named Bérenger Saunière had supposedly discovered these seemingly ancient parchments inside a pillar while renovating his church in Rennes-le-Château in 1891. " - how could there be earlier claims that these had been discovered if de Cherisey and Plantard had just written them?
  • What was Plantard's manuscript? I'm confused as to whether it was going to be a fake old document or whether he was writing a book on something - and what was the topic?
  • This needs a source: "Based on the wording used, the versions of the Latin texts found in the parchments can be shown to have been copied from books first published in 1889 and 1895"
  • Watch for misplaced commas. This sentence "documents claimed that the Priory of Sion had been founded in 1099, and created the Knights Templar." makes it sound that the documents created the Knights Templar.
  • There is a lot of awkward phrasing; a tighter choice of wording will make the prose flow better. For example, the paragraph on the letters that confirm the hoax needs a lot of work. The first three sentences begin with "The letters " or "letter" and slowly dole out information. Individual sentences are often too long. For example, the first sentence "Letters in existence dating from the 1960s written by Plantard, de Chérisey and de Sède to each other confirm that the three were engaging in an out-and-out hoax." could be written more actively (and more tightly focused) as "Plantard, de Cherisey, and de Sede planned their hoax via letter in the 1960s."
  • Chaumeil is mentioned as having been part of the hoax, but his role is not made clear. Is there any information on what he actually did?
  • I would move the section Plantard's plot into the history section. If not there, it may be best in its own section called "Hoax creation" or something like that
  • "This led them to the pseudohistorical Dossiers Secrets" - how did it lead them? Would it be better to say, "They discovered...."?
  • Watch the scare quotes. There is no reason why a pseudonym should be in quotes. (also, why put words like "usurped" in quotes?)
  • I'm not entirely fond of the formatting of the Holy Blood.. section. The bulk of it seems to be in lost format. I'm not sure if there will be a better way to organize it though.
  • "It has been reported Plantard admitted under oath he had fabricated everything, including Pelat's involvement with the Priory of Sion" - might be wise to include who reported it
  • "Sandri has been described as a " - described by whom?

Karanacs (talk) 14:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll work on fixing all of this during the coming week. --Loremaster (talk) 20:02, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.