Talk:John O'Reily/GA1

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Reviewer: Mkativerata (talk) 05:52, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

I've just had a read through the article and I'll do a review of it.

My general impressions are as follows:

• There aren't many comprehensive sources available, which makes it harder to write the biography. I think the ideal WP biography is a summary of more comprehensive biographical material written by others. This article does the opposite: it tries to bring together non-comprehensive biographical material to create a comprehensive biography. That's a harder job, in particular when it comes to striking the balance between original research and plagiarism. I think the article does a reasonable job, but there are perhaps one or two places where, on the basis of the available sources, the difficulties become apparent. Usually it is when a sentence needs to be said on an aspect of O'Reily's life, but there is only one sentence on that aspect in a reliable source to draw upon.
• All the sources seem reliable: I take it the Catholic Church sources are sufficiently credible. A sample reveals that the online and accessible sources support the statements they purport to support. So it's a tick on the verifiability and accuracy criterion, which is the most important criterion.
• The use of images is fine.
• The article is neutral and stable.
• The article is readable. My comments below are mainly to do with prose. The GA requirements for prose are not onerous: some of my comments likely go above and beyond what is required for GA. I make the comments because I think the objective of a GA review is not only to get the article past GA, but to improve it generally.

Accordingly, it's not far from GA and with a bit of work it can be passed in this review.

Lead

• The lead ought to be longer. Its role is to summarise the most important aspects of the article and it ought to "stand on its own as a concise version of the article" (WP:LEAD). To that end, at least three paragraphs are normally warranted.

   Fixed. I've fleshed it out somewhat. It's only two paragraphs, but I feel it does a pretty good job at summarising the article.

• Does "Australian" need to be wikilinked? Anyone visiting this article surely knows what Australia is. (See for example the FA article Don Bradman).

  Looks good, although the phrase "greatly improved the financial position of the" is repeated in close proximity.

  "state-schools" doesn't need a hyphen.

   Fixed

• "after becoming a Catholic priest". "Catholic" isn't necessary in light of the previous sentence.

   Fixed

• "in this role" doesn't seem necessary.

   Fixed

• "Archbishop" is wikilinked twice. I actually think the wikilink would be better as a pipelink to Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide#Archbishops of Adelaide .

   Fixed. I've removed the second wikilink. I'm not sure a wikilink to the list of Adelaide Archbishops is necessary, since the word "Adelaide" is already piped to Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide, and the articles is dominated by the list of Archbishops anyway. If you disagree, let me know.

Early life

• "John O'Reily was born John O'Reilly" The first John isn't needed.

   Fixed

• "November 19, 1846 in Kilkenny". There needs to be a comma after 1846. Though I'd recommend the more Australian and less clunky "19 November 1846", which doesn't need any commas. If you want to go down this path you'll need to make the change throughout the article.

   Fixed. I've made the change to all the dates in the article.

• "Due to poor health, O'Reilly decided". O'Reilly can be "he" here.

   Fixed

• "excelled in mental philosophy, mathematics and ecclesiastical studies". This sentence is quite close to the source, no doubt because there's only one source for it. I recommend dropping "excelled" - that creative verb that stands out as it's been used in the source.

   Fixed. I've restructured this sentence, using French to source the areas he studied, and adding in the fact that he received first prize in all of his classes (referenced in Schumman).

• "he became a parish priest in Fremantle". Need a comma after Fremantle.

   Fixed

Bishop of Port Augusta

• The photo caption shouldn't have a full stop as it's not a complete sentence.

   Fixed

• "appointed as Bishop". Bishop of Adelaide or Port Augusta? The sentence doesn't make it clear. I'd suggest "as the diocese Bishop".

   Fixed. That was a poorly written passage, even by my standards, so I've completely rewritten it.

• "the cardinal of Sydney". Is cardinal a proper noun here (ie Cardinal)?

   Fixed

• "Cardinal Moran" Don't need "Cardinal" here.

   Fixed

• "official church enquiry". Where an enquiry is an official investigation, "inquiry" is normally better.

   Fixed

• "of the South Australian diocese" Is this the "Adelaide Archdiocese"? The "South Australian diocese" is a new concept to the article at this point that has me confused.

   Fixed, it was meant to be a plural (dioceses). It refers to the financial situation of both Adelaide and Port Pirie.

• "and on May 1, 1888 he" comma after 1888

   Fixed

• Later that year, O'Reilly dropped an "l" in his last name "to save time and labour in signing documents". Whose words are in the quote marks? O'Reily's or someone else's? The online source doesn't make it clear either because they're in quote marks there too. If we don't know, I'd suggest dropping the quotes and going with alternative wording.

   Fixed I imagine the words are O'Reilly's, but I can't be sure. I had cited both the Dictionary of Biography (ADB) and Rice for this fact, but I've just noticed that Rice actually cites the ADB himself. I've re-written the sentence with alternative wording and removed Rice as a reference.

• "Catholic high school - boarding or otherwise". Need an em dash here, not a hyphen.

   Fixed

• What is the "Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith"? Without a blue link, the reader needs a brief explanation.

  The Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith is now the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. I didn't wikilink it because I had done so two paragraphs up where I had also mentioned it. Still, it's quite an obscure reference; is it worth wikilinking twice?

  Ah, didn't see that. No need to wikilink twice.

• "He personally visited each one to request financial support" Do we need "personally"? "one" would be better off as "district".

   Fixed

• "Having received permission from Archbishop Carr in Melbourne, he toured parishes in Victoria asking for funds for his new diocese". What was the permission? What goes before the comma and what goes after don't necessarily follow. How about "With the permission of…" which would be shorter and provide the link needed. Then if "he toured" is changed to "O'Reily toured", "O'Reily" can be changed to "he" in the following sentence, making for a more logical interchange between "O'Reily" and "he"

   Fixed

• "the situation where Catholics payed taxes". "situation" is clunky and could be avoided by moving "unfair and unjust" to the front of the sentence. There's a way the sentence can be re-worded so no commas are needed.

   Fixed

• As capitation grant is a redlink, the article should explain to the reader what it means.

   Fixed

• "South Australian parliament" should be wikilinked.

   Fixed

• "The bill failed, but was passed in 1891" Is there any reason for the sudden change in political winds? Not strictly necessary for the article but it does leave the reader wondering.

   Fixed (sort of). None of the sources I have readily available to me address the reason for the shift in support for the bill, but I fleshed the section out to give a better picture of the issues involved.

• "vicar general" should be wikilinked.

   Fixed

Archbishop of Adelaide

• "minimise the proportion of debt" Is "proportion of" needed?

   Fixed

• What are "centralised liabilities"?

   Fixed The term is used in a whole heap of coverage of the SA Catholic Church's problems by The Advertiser (see [1] [2]), but apparently not anywhere else. From the context, it is clearly referring to the total liabilities of the Archdiocese, so I have changed it to reflect this.

• "The sale or mortgaging of church land required an act of parliament, and in October 1896, a select committee approved The Catholic Church Endowment Society Incorporated Sale of Lands (Private) Bill, which passed through the South Australian Parliament without opposition, enabling O'Reily to pursue his agenda of selling the land" This sentence has a few issues and could be broken into two. For example, what is the "select committee", and why is the timing of its approval (October 1896) more important than the timing of passage through Parliament (unstated)? "pursue his agenda" is also unnecessary.

   Fixed

• "teachers themselves were religious, and Catholic students" The comma here confuses the sentence because it can break the link between "Catholic students" and "so long as".

   Fixed

Later life and legacy

• Just a brief note on a change I have in this section. I've stumbled across this article/editorial about O'Reily from The Advertiser a few years before his death. I thought the glowing terms it uses to describe him were worth quoting, but the phrase "The excellent relationship which exists between the two great divisions of the Christian Church in this state is due to a large extent to the Archbishop's broadness of mind and to his quiet determination to avoid unnecessary controversy" caught my attention. This is the same as the phrase Laffin attributes to John Langdon Bonython, and I assume she does so because Bonython was editing The Advertiser at the time. I'm not particularly comfortable attributing it to Bonython on these grounds, so I've reworked the section to call it an Advertiser editorial, instead. Please let me know what you think.  -- Lear's Fool 11:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

  Good move.

• Should this section mention his travels to Rome and Ireland? French seems to devote attention to them.

   Fixed. I've added a sentence about it. I can't find anything else about it in the other sources I have, so I think one sentence is probably appropriate.

• "O'Reily retreated to his house in Glen Osmond, constructed with his private funds, where he spent time growing vegetables and raising Irish terriers. An admiring press dubbed him the "Recluse of Glen Osmond"." Too close to this source. A couple of ways to avoid: (a) don't use the same creative adjectives and verbs ("retreated", "admiring", "dubbed") and (b) summarise rather than re-iterate (eg are the vegetables and terriers necessary?)

   Fixed

• "appointment of a religious as Archbishop" seems to be a missing word here.

  "Religious" is being used as a noun here, since Spence was a Franciscan and not a Diocesan priest.

  Thanks - learn something every day.

• "the Protestants and Catholics in" would read better if either "the" was dropped or "in" changed to "of".

   Fixed

• And... passed. Nice job! --Mkativerata (talk) 21:03, 21 January 2011 (UTC)