Talk:Goddards/GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: Mertbiol (talk · contribs) 17:19, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Tim riley (talk · contribs) 10:26, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Starting first read-through now. Comments to follow shortly. Tim riley talk 10:26, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Initial comments

This is a pleasing article and I expect to be able to promote it to GA. But first a few preliminary comments, most of which are merely stylistic and to be acted on or not as you think fit.

• Lead

• "The majority of the building has been leased..." – I don't think you can have the majority of a single entity. The OED defines "majority" as "The greater number or part; a number which is more than half the total number, esp. of votes". Here I think you need "most" or "much"

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• History

• "stands to the southeast of the Lutyens house" – the OED hyphenates "south-east"

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• "In 1898, shipping magnate Frederick Mirrielees" – clunky false title. Later in the text you avoid this tabloidese construction and I suggest you do so here, and in "constructed by local building firm, Harrisons" in the same paragraph

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• "The majority of the women who stayed at Goddards were single and were generally employed as nurses or governesses" – slightly ambiguous: I think you mean that most of them were nurses or governesses rather than that they were employed most of the time. I suggest deleting "generally"

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• "The Landmark Trust leased the majority of the house" – as above.

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• House

• "colourwashed rough-cast stone" – the OED hyphenates "colour-wash.

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• "As the writer, Dominic Bradbury, notes" – you should lose the commas here as they turn what is plainly meant to be a restrictive phrase into a non-restrictive one, making Mr Bradbury the only writer in existence.

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• "The library and dining room, on the ground floor, are each dominated by an inglenook fireplace, and the latter has wooden panelling" – the latter of what? The fireplaces, presumably, but that isn't what the sentence says. The OED hyphenates "ingle-nook".

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• "Lutyens' father" – I think this should have ess-apostrophe-ess at the end, as in Hussey (1984), Ridley (2002), Tankard (2011). This is from the current (2015) edition of Fowler: Names ending in -s. Use 's for the possessive case in names and surnames whenever possible; in other words, whenever you would tend to pronounce the possessive form of the name with an extra iz sound, e.g. Charles's brother, St James's Square, Thomas's niece, Zacharias's car.

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• "The datestone above the front door" – the OED hyphenates "date-stone".

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• Gardens

• "it was intended to be low maintenance" – the OED hyphenates "low-maintenance"

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• "A vine planted by Jekyll in 1900 still survives – careful of WP:DATED here: it would be as well to say that it still survives in 2024.

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• Critical responses

• "In his 2005 book, English gardens in the twentieth century" – sentence case won't do for the title. You can see from the title page that the title is "English Gardens in the Twentieth Century". Even if, for some typographer's whim, sentence case, or even all lower case, were on the title page, Wikipedia's house style is to render titles in title case. (And as the book is available in the Internet Archive it seems a bit mean not to add the url in the Bibliography section.) The same objection to the absence of title case goes for The iconic house and Landmark : A history of Britain in 50 buildings.

Done Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• "a promising asymetrical style" – I doubt if Nairn misspelled "asymmetrical", but if he did we can either [sic] it or silently correct the spelling (MOS:SIC).

Nairn didn’t, and Mertbiol is only guilty of cut-and-pasting what was my initial error (see above)! Sorry. KJP1 (talk) 12:41, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I might have known that in an article about an English country house I'd find KJP1 lurking in the background. Good to see you, dear boy! Tim riley talk 13:00, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Fixed Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• In the quotation from Daniel O'Neill you misspell "rigour" – which O'Neill does not.

Fixed Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• "Brian Edwards writes: "Much of the beauty of [Lutyens'] buildings derives from ..." – I think this is a bit misleading: Edwards is not writing about Lutyens's buildings in general but of Goddards in particular: "Much of the beauty of these buildings derives from their odd, sometimes disturbing, proportion".

Fixed Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• Bibliography

• My comments, above, about title case apply here, to most of the titles. Title case should be used for all the books.

Fixed Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• It would be a kindness to your readers to add the urls of all the listed books that are available at the Internet Archive. These, as far as I can see, are Hussey (1989), Ridley (2002) and Richardson (2005).

Added all three, as well as Powers (2005) Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Over to you. I'll put the review on hold for a week to give you time to address these points. – Tim riley talk 12:32, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you @Tim riley: for taking on yet another of my nominations to review and for your comments. I think I have addressed everything so far. Best wishes, Mertbiol (talk) 12:24, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Overall summary

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria In my judgment this article could be a worthy candidate for WP:FAC.

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   Well referenced

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   Well referenced

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   Well illustrated

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

   Well illustrated

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

I found this an interesting and instructive article to review. It gives me great pleasure to promote it to GA. - Tim riley talk 18:23, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you @Tim riley: for your very diligent review and thanks again to @KJP1: for their comments on the talk page last week. Best wishes, Mertbiol (talk) 20:13, 17 November 2024 (UTC)