Talk:Ammonia fuming

Ammonia fuming has been listed as one of the Art and architecture good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: December 5, 2013. (Reviewed version).

A fact from Ammonia fuming appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 8 November 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the technique of darkening oak by ammonia fuming was discovered accidentally when boards stored in a stable were darkened by fumes from horse urine?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2013/November. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Ammonia fuming.

Wikipedia

GA Review

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

Reviewer: Curly Turkey (talk · contribs) 23:11, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll do this review. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:11, 3 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to disagree with any of my feedback—not all of it is necessary to pass the GA review, and some of it is just my preferences. Also, DISCLAIMER: I know remarkably little about the subject.

Prose

Lead

to fumes from a strong aqueous solution: link aqueous solution?

Done Spinning Spark 18:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

you note that "white oak" links to the wrong species. Do you know which of the European species in List of Quercus species it might be?

If you are referring to the hidden comment in the article, that is from user Piledhigheranddeeper, not me. It is not exactly linking to the wrong species but may be overly specific, linking to the American Quercus alba. The species Stickley was working with was undoubtedly Q. alba and this is still probably right in in a US context. However, if you are sold European white oak in the UK it is most likely English oak, Q. robur. That is very likely the fumed samples I provided (I got them from here) but I couldn't say for certain. I daresay other European species can be succesfully fumed, such as the Cornish oak (now why is that a redlink? I'll do something about that in a minute) Q. petraea. See what this supplier has to say on the indistinguishability of wood from those oak species for instance. I think the sensible thing would be for white oak to redirect to List of Quercus species#Section Quercus. Perhaps with a hatnote to the specific US species. In short, I don't think there is anything wrong with this article itself. Spinning Spark 18:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

most usually associated: I think "most" is superfluous

Done Spinning Spark 18:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Advantages and disadvantages

Fuming is also colour fast.: not "colourfast"?

Done Spinning Spark 18:50, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

all taken from the same tree.: I think you can safely drop "all"

Done Spinning Spark 18:50, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

may not darken so noticeably as white oak, or not at all,: I think it reads better if you drop the second "not"

Done Spinning Spark 18:50, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Process

may be provided or else the ammonia: "or else" on gfirst reading sounds ominous—drop the "else"?

Done Spinning Spark 19:10, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

History

introduced to the USA: there are those who get pissy about suing "USA"—to the extant that the MOS deprecates its use

Done, I can't afford to sue the USA. But couldn't US be confused with the United States of Mexico? Spinning Spark 19:16, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Structuring

Would "Process" not be better placed before "Advantages and disadvantages"?

Done Spinning Spark 19:19, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comprehensive

The article's brief, but I don't have the feeling anything important's missing

Refs

ref #2: need a comma after "Ammonium Hydroxide"

Done

ref #3 & #8: need endashes for page ranges
Can't find any close paraphrasing problems in the sources I could access:
- Hasluck checks out; is there any reason to leave out the bit about turpentine?
  - Because he's wandered off the topic of fuming onto the topic of oiling which is a different finish from the subject of the article. Spinning Spark 19:32, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- ref #9: you give the page range 117–119, but I don't see anything about this on page 117
  - Fuming may not be mentioned on p117 but that is where the relevant passage starts. That page also serves to cite Stickley's involvement in Arts and Crafts furniture. Spinning Spark 19:32, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Clark & Thomas-Clark, Rodel, and Smith check out
- I can't access Cathers or Stickley
  - Gbooks doesn't find Cathers from the ISBN link, but it gets there if you put the title directly in gbooks search (under a different ISBN). Amazon finds it from the ISBN link as does WorldCat. Not seeing a problem with Stickley, that comes up in gbooks from the ISBN link in preview mode. Spinning Spark 19:45, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Kevin Rodel, "Fuming with ammonia", in Finishes & Finishing Techniques, pages 56-60, Taunton Press, 1999 ISBN 1561582980.: I can't find the guideline, but I believe we're supposed to capitalize titles in book case for English sources even when the source doesn't. Also, need an endash for the page range.
should the authors in the "Bibliography" not be formatted SURNAME, GIVENNAME?
Links to publishers would be nice

Images

File:Clonfert Cathedral Choir Stalls South 2009 09 17.jpg: at Commons, uploaded by AFBorchert and licenced Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany
File:Fumed oak.jpg, File:Unfumed oak.jpg, File:Fuming chart.jpg: at Commons, uploaded by SpinningSpark and licenced Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0
All clear, though it would be nice if they had alt text per WP:ALT, and if they were placed more relevantly per MOS:IMAGELOCATION, though the brevity of the article makes this difficult

I've moved all but one of the articles out of the lede section. It really isn't going to make much difference to the article appearance where they are placed. Spinning Spark 19:53, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

———Curly Turkey (gobble) 01:07, 4 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Curly, nice to here from you again. Belated congratulations on getting Lusitania to FA.

You have certainly gone beyond the requirements of GA in some of your comments, especially on the references, and a lot of this I would not normally bother with for a GA. If this was headed for FA it would be different, but it ain't. I don't much see the point of doing endashes manually when so many people are going around fixing them with scripts. Surname order is not mandated and has little utility on a short list like this. I've never been a fan of links to publishers in bibliographies; ideally there should be only one link, to the relevant source, as this makes it easier for a reader to use. Maybe link the author as well if notable, but that's all; linking the publisher is just one more blue link that might lead the reader to the wrong place. Chapter titles in books, like journal articles in a journal volume, are properly rendered in sentence case between quotation marks: see WP:CITE/ES#Books. Spinning Spark 17:46, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think I'm about done with your comments. I intend to add a passage about Stickley fuming whole rooms just as soon as I remember where I read it. Don't know why I didn't put that in at the time. Spinning Spark 19:48, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Pass. It looks like you've added the bit about fuming rooms already, too. I've gone and done some formatting on the article as well. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:07, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the pass. It was easier to search gbooks for a new source on Stickley's room fuming (mentioned surprisingly frequently) than to recall the original passage from a senile brain. Spinning Spark 23:32, 5 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]