Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of current sovereign monarchs/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Dabomb87 22:48, 18 February 2011 [1].

List of current sovereign monarchs[edit]

Nominator(s): Nightw 16:11, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it to be a concise, comprehensive list that can be a good example for other lists on Wikipedia. It is fairly simple, but in my opinion, it effectively briefs the reader on the subject, while providing well-placed links for further information. If nothing else, this nomination will be a fantastic opportunity to identify areas for improvement. Peer reviews were conducted in September and October. Nightw 16:11, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Should be at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates, as it's very definitely a list. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:14, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Moved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:18, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Sorry... Nightw 16:21, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Restarted, old version.
Note I have restarted this nomination because the nomination was quite long and the consensus was unclear. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:48, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comments on accessibilty: Accessibility of the table is good. In theory a caption would be an improvement, but in this case where there is only one table and it is the only element in its section, it could be argued that a caption would be redundant. ~~The images in the Standard column would benefit from alt text (as the filename is read out otherwise). --RexxS~~ (talk) 00:37, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support: Issues above now resolved. --RexxS (talk) 23:22, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I still think this should be ordered by the monarchs column, not the monarchies one. Nergaal (talk) 03:57, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- It's sortable, so you can have it ordered by any column you like. I must admit, though, that I'd slightly prefer that the State column contained the row headers, as that piece of information uniquely identifies the row, whereas the name of the monarch does not. --RexxS (talk) 05:02, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - It originally was done that way, but I wanted to highlight the actual item being listed, which is the monarch...especially since it is not allocated the leftmost column. Nightw 17:12, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- ♫Greatorangepumpkin♫ T 10:48, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support – My comments were all resolved before the restart, and I don't have any new ones. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 23:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support: Looks a lot better. Perhaps an image of Queen Elizabeth II would add to the page, alongside the existing Japanese Emperor and Dutch Queen? Mainly with the association with 'monarch' that she has being monarch of many English-speaking countries around the world. —JeevanJones (talk) 17:31, 21 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - Despite the length of certain paragraphs the Lead I'm pretty sure conflicts with WP:LEAD#Length. Since no work was being done regarding the use of language templates, I have taken the liberty and removed them and added the correct parameter, I've also replaced the month name with the numerical value to keep it consistent with the rest of the references. Afro (Talk) 08:58, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for fixing those up. I generally prefer the language icons, and was under the impression that this was okay, but if there's a community preference to use the parameters instead, then I won't object. I've merged two of the smaller paragraphs in order to comply with length standards. Nightw 16:01, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I have no issues and the issue wasn't that the pages are in a different language it was just there's no need to use the Language icons when there is a perfectly usable parameter in the template, it makes it easier for editors to edit the reference also. Afro (Talk) 02:19, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The only thing from my original comments that is still unresolved is the huge amount of WP:EGG links. A key should be added to explain where all of these go, as it's not immediately evident (or in some cases, even evident in passing). — KV5 • Talk • 16:33, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Are there any instances in particular you can give, just as an example? Nightw 19:44, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Sure. Just as an example, in the "Australia" row, you've linked "Queen" to List of Australian monarchs, "Constitutional" to Monarchy of Australia, and "Hereditary" to Line of succession to the British throne. It's not self-evident as to where these links actually go. At face value (without following the links or rolling over to see their destination), I would assume that "Queen" has been underlinked (because it's only linked in some of the Elizabeth II entries, not all, that "Constitutional" links to an article on constitutional monarchy, and that "hereditary" links to an article on primogeniture or some such (the "succession" links are possibly ok as is, but the "type" links are really a problem). — KV5 • Talk • 18:17, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Ah, I see. Thanks. So what is the best way for the linking to be explained? In simple prose above the table? Nightw 06:58, 24 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - Honestly, I would prefer that the links be removed, but that's probably not the optimum solution. I would use a tabular key rather than simple prose, as I think it's clearer. — KV5 • Talk • 23:03, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your patience! What about this kind of thing? Nightw 04:55, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Legend
Monarch	Name of monarch, preceded by title, with link to list of predecessors.	Since	Date of assumption of throne; coronation date listed in footnotes.
House	Name of royal family, with information on bloodline.	Type	Form of monarchy, with link to information on role of the monarch within government.
Succession	Method or pattern of succession, with link to current line of succession.	Standard	Heraldry attributed to the relevant monarch or monarchy.
N/A	Denotes where specific field is not applicable.	—	Denotes where data is not available.

- That's a good start, but keep in mind that the key has to meet ACCESS standards too. Rowheaders and the like. — KV5 • Talk • 12:08, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Does this work? It might be preferable to have just two columns instead of four. I don't know if this affects accessibility. Nightw 12:32, 27 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - A much better bet for maximising accessibility would be two columns. And to be honest, a table with two columns can get away without row or column headers; anyone using a screen reader won't get lost navigating around such a table, but you could still put them in as an example of good practice. Optionally, the legend would fit perfectly as a list from a semantic view, but a list isn't as pretty as a table. --RexxS (talk) 01:03, 28 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Just noticed all the markup in there. It's not needed:

Legend
Key	Description
Monarch	Name of monarch, preceded by title, with link to list of predecessors.
Since	Date of assumption of throne; coronation date listed in footnotes.
House	Name of royal family, with information on bloodline.
Type	Form of monarchy, with link to information on role of the monarch within government.
Succession	Method or pattern of succession, with link to current line of succession.
Standard	Heraldry attributed to the relevant monarch or monarchy.
N/A	Denotes where specific field is not applicable.
—	Denotes where data is not available.

Have a look at the wikitext. The only presentational formatting that I've removed is the italic as I don't think its use is justified per WP:ITALIC. --RexxS (talk) 01:32, 28 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay! Added. Thanks for the help, RexxS. Nightw 12:50, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

~~Additionally, alt text is needed for the royal standards. — KV5 • Talk • 16:37, 22 January 2011 (UTC)~~[reply]
- Done. Nightw 19:44, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - My comments have been satisfactorily resolved. — KV5 • Talk • 12:56, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 22:59, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - glad to see the patience of the nominator and the diligence of the reviewers in coming back. A good example of WP:DEADLINE...

"For monarchs reigning over a constituent division, cultural or traditional polity, see constituent monarchs. For current claimants to abolished thrones, see pretenders." Much as I loathe "... see ..." in prose in the lead (after all, that's why we have "see also" sections), I see why this is useful. However, is there no way you can rephrase this into prose without instructing our reader to "see" something else?
in my opinion, you should link the captions appropriately because they appear before the table.
I know this is a bad time to bring it up but I'm curious as to the accessibility of the Standard column. Without descriptive alt text, is alt text useful at all?
Ref 3 - year range in the title needs an en-dash.
Retrieve dates, I assume, should all be ISO 8601 format, which means they should be yyyy-mm-dd, not dd-mm-yyyy as you currently have them.
Check capitalisation of Ref 10 per this.
Ref 12 needs comprehensive formatting.
Ref 24 needs en-dash.
Ref 74 appears dead to me.
First EL has no publisher.

The Rambling Man (talk) 16:17, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

- Thanks for coming back RM! Regarding the "inline redirection" in the lead, would replacing "... are listed in ..." (or some variation thereof) be any better? Otherwise, I may have to rephrase it as part of the actual prose. I've added the links to the captions. I'm not really familiar with alt text convetions—do you think it better to make them descriptive, or just leave the parameter blank; another reviewer stated earlier that just adding the alt parameter would be fine, as it would stop the lengthy file names being read out. Nightw 17:03, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - I would prefer you work those "see" links into prose if possible. As for the alt text, check with User:RexxS whether a blank alt text is better than just repeating the filename. I'm not sure how useful the current alt text would be to a visually impaired reader. I accept that some alt text is probably better than none...! The Rambling Man (talk) 17:09, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Ok, I'll work on this shortly and see what I come up with. Nightw 17:16, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - The choices for alt text for the images in the Standards column are:
        completely omitted from the markup; This is unacceptable, since a screen reader could then announce the filename twice, something like "Link, File:BXVI CoA like gfx PioM.svg, File:BXVI CoA like gfx PioM.svg" in the worst case.
        
        alt text set to nothing; This is an improvement, and a screen reader would just announce the link to the graphic, "Link, File:BXVI CoA like gfx PioM.svg".
        
        the simple name of the standard; This is better because a screen reader would speak something like "Link, File:BXVI CoA like gfx PioM.svg, Personal Standard of Pope Benedict XVI"; although in the cases of the more descriptive filenames it may seem like a repetition.
        
        a full description of what the standard looks like; This is often the optimal alternative, but these sort of images require considerable text to do a decent job of describing them, and we can't guarantee that visually-impaired users will want to hear all that for each one. By writing long alt text, we don't give the visually-impaired user a choice.
      - So personally, in this case, I'd prefer to see concise alt text, coupled with an improved description on the image page – so that any visually-impaired reader could find the information there if they were really interested in exactly what the standard looked like. There's no perfect solution, but I'm content with the choice that Nightw has made. HTH --RexxS (talk) 18:00, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

- Regarding your notes on the refs (I can't help but admire your thoroughness!), I was able to fix up #'s 3 and 10. Note that the numbering has changed now (these are now #'s 3 and 6). Ref74 (now 73) is working fine for me; confirming that it is the Times obituary? Ref 12 (still 12) doesn't contain much more information than shown; there's no publisher or date shown on the website, and the same goes for Royalark in the EL. The dating format causes an issue, because the article uses (or did use) the {{Use dmy dates}} format. I had originally had the retrieve dates in yyyy-mm-dd format, as I had thought that was the standard also. But I was told in a peer review that this was not the case, and that all dates should be in the same format. Nightw 17:03, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Ok, Times page may have just been unfortunate timing, good. Ref 12 can have an accessdate, and if nothing else, the website used as the the publisher info. As for "dmy" that's fine in prose (e.g. 14 January 1944) but when you use the ISO date format, it has to be yyyy-mm-dd. You can have mixed formats, but only different between the main list and the refs, i.e. all refs in the main list must have the same format, all dates in the refs must have the same format, if possible they should all have the same format, but WP:MOS doesn't insist on that. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:09, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Ok, so if I change the accessdates, I will also have to change the published dates, correct? Nightw 17:16, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - You got it. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:18, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        Ok, that's done. Nightw 17:32, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oooh, support, very neat list. Staxringold _talk^contribs 00:56, 2 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comments:
- Some of the footnotes seem extraneous: Do we need all of the ones that go into detail on the royal houses? That's not immediately needed for this list, especially the historical information. The notes 5, 6, 10 (see next note), part of 12 (the first part is useful, the 'branch of' less so), the clan part of 21, 24, 31, 34, possibly 44, 45, and the bishop portion of 49. These all seem like they would be better handled in the articles on the houses, rather than crowding up the footnote section.
- The house for Cambodia, is this correct? It would seem more accurate (to me) to say Varman, rather than Norodom, especially since Norodom does not direct to any house or dynasty. But I am not the expert. :) --Golbez (talk) 21:25, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Yes, this is the surname adopted by the descendants of Norodom I. It distinguishes them from those of Sisowath, whom are also eligible for succession under the constitution. I suppose this should be further explained in the footnotes, which I suppose ties in with your first comment. I'll get to that in a moment. Nightw 04:13, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Ah, so it's a weird situation. Hrm. If that's their surname, then yes, I suppose that does go in the house column, with an explaination as to what dynasty it's part of... here, let me express my questions specifically:
Note 3: "The House of Windsor is a line of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which itself is a branch of the House of Wettin. "Windsor" is the official name adopted by the royal family of the United Kingdom since 1917." I don't think we need the last sentence; renames a century ago belong in the house article, not here. I was originally going to say we didn't need the bit about "House of Wettin", either, but since another royal family is in that line, it may make sense to include it.
Note 5: A tribe, without further elucidation, is just a tribe, without any particular royal leanings. Unless the king of Bahrain and emir of Kuwait are always from this tribe, it seems extraneous. To me, as an ignorant westerner, it almost sounds like linking two U.S. Presidents together because they were both from Ohio. Maybe Arabian tribes have more meaning than that, I don't know, which is why I bring it to you to justify the note. :)
Note 6: After re-examining note 3 as mentioned above, I'm actually fine with this staying, to show that the two houses are linked.
Note 10: Now that you've explained, it makes more sense, and yes, the note should explain it as you did. :)
Note 12: Since no other monarchy presently is in the House of Oldenburg, I don't think this needs to be mentioned here... does it? I mean, how often does someone refer to Harald V as being in the House of Oldenburg? Probably as often as people mention Elizabeth II of the House of Wettin? :) Gosh, now as I'm writing these I'm starting to doubt my call for trimming them, but I think that, unless the "part of the house of ..." is relevant to the list (that is, another monarchy is also in said line), it should be relegated to the house article.
Note 16: This is a case of clan/tribe being allowed as a house name, since the name of the kingdom actually is "The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan". However, I'm not entirely sure we need it, as it falls under the "rename?" issue that maybe doesn't belong on this list? Hrm.
Note 20: The Basotho is simply the demonym for people from Lesotho, so the first sentence redundant. As for the second half, see my points on note 16.
Note 23: Since the House of Nassau is also that of another monarchy, this I suppose should stay.
Note 30: See note 23
Note 33: Another tribe, the "largest of all Arab tribes". Unless there's some rule that all Qatari emirs must be from this tribe, it seems extraneous.
Note 38: The data seemed extraneous on first glance, but wow, that's certainly a unique way to choose a king: Choose his mother! So yeah, that's definitely useful information.
Note 43: No other house is in this dynasty so maybe it doesn't need to be mentioned?
Note 44: Since note 46 specifies that the ruler is always from Al Nahyan, it's relevant to explain the tribe a little bit, so this one seems okay.
The Pope: I was wrong and you're right, it does appear his primary office is that of Bishop of Rome, and from that all other things follow. Maybe his note could be rearranged "As Sovereign of the Vatican City, by virtue of being Bishop of Rome." (even though both links go to the same place, Pope :P)
- I apologize if I'm getting into too much detail, just wanting to make sure it's all good. :) --Golbez (talk) 14:55, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Not at all, the content has developed with very little collaboration anyway, so it's good to finally get another's ideas. I've fixed up note 3; with that extra information gone, I was thinking it could now probably be combined somehow with note 6...? I've fixed note 48, and I'll also expand the explanation on note 10 shortly.
  - You are right in saying that this information should lie in the house articles, and in most instances this is the case. In most cases, however, it is necessary to mention the main house in addition to the branch, as these are the actual houses they belong to from a purel genealogical perspective. The branches, in most cases, are just given a different name because they're not the seniormost descendants of that house. Harald is a good example. Because he descends the third son of Christian III, rather than the eldest, he represents a junior branch, but the House he belongs to is still Oldenburg (see more information). In most sources (example), his House will be identified as "Oldenburg", with the branch following in parentheses. Nightw 08:00, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Ahaaa. Okay, I think I see now. Yeah, my only experience with monarchies has been UK and Japan, and they haven't had to deal with such issues in recent history. So these footnotes are mostly to allay confusion an educated reader might have; "He's not part of Oldenburg, he's part of X!" or what not. I can live with that. Though most of the time I would say drop the "House of Wettin" bit from Windsor, except for the fact that another house is also in that, so they're linked. So that explains the houses; what about the tribes? :) --Golbez (talk) 14:28, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - While tribal affiliation is very important to Arab society, you're right in saying that this probably is a bit extraneous here. The rulers would always come from these tribes, but only because the ruling clan (or "house" in this context) can only belong to one tribe. I'd probably only keep the Utub reference, as it shows the familial ties between the families of Kuwait and Bahrain, which are quite close. Regarding Lesotho, the note was added mainly for search purposes of alternate spelling ("Moshoesh", "Moshwesh"), but this probably isn't a big issue, and can be removed. Nightw 09:25, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- Done. Nightw 13:17, 12 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - And thus, support. --Golbez (talk) 18:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keeping this open pending resolution of Golbez's comments... Dabomb87 (talk) 22:13, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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