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Israel the Grammarian

[edit]
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 promoted by Ian Rose 07:04, 21 June 2014 [1].


Israel the Grammarian (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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Nominator(s): Dudley Miles (talk) 19:04, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Israel was one of the leading European scholars of the tenth century, and one of the very few who knew Greek. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England have been particularly interested in his career at the court of King Æthelstan. Dudley Miles (talk) 19:04, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support – I peer reviewed and had my few quibbles thoroughly dealt with then. This is a top-notch article, full but not over-detailed, in excellent prose, well illustrated, widely sourced and fully referenced, and well balanced. Plainly meets all the FA criteria in my view. Tim riley talk 20:20, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks. Dudley Miles (talk) 20:55, 29 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done

All done. Thanks very much for the review. Dudley Miles (talk) 17:00, 31 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support With a request;

Thanks very much. I have revised. Does it look OK now?

Comments from Curly Turkey

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  • I'm pretty sure that "mid tenth" should be hyphenated as, unlike "late" or "early", "mid" is not a standalone word
Done.
  • Israel is recorded as a bishop in the late 940s: does this mean that in the records he was a bishop in the 940s, or that in records of the 940s he was recorded as a bishop?
Clarified that he was recorded as a bishop in the 940s.
  • When King Alfred the Great became King of Wessex in 871: was he a king elsewhere before becoming King of Wessex? If not, maybe the title should be dropped where he's introduced (either way, I think I'd drop it).
Done.
  • from the Continent,: should be obvious, but maybe explicate which continent?
Done.
  • and himself translating works: seems unnatural to me. "translated" maybe?
Done.
  • inviting foreign scholars such as Israel to England: could it be clarified why Israel was a "foreign" scholar if he was a Breton?
Brittany in what later became France would have been regarded as foreign. I have clarified that Brittany, Cornwall and Wales were Celtic speaking refuges for Britons who fled the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England. (There was also a refuge in northern Spain, but Celtic disappeared there early, whereas it still survives in Brittany.)
Done.
  • The generation who were educated: a chance for WP:COMMONALITY might be to shorten to "The generation educated" ("The generation were" grates against North American ears, not that it's "wrong")
Done
  • such as Flodoard's chronicle: the chronicle doesn't get uppercased?
Done (and italicised).
  • Lapidge argues that the bishop of Bangor in County Down, Dub Innse, described Israel as a "Roman scholar", and that he therefore does not appear to have recognised him as a fellow Irishman, and further that Flodoard was contemporary with Israel and may have known him, whereas Ruotger wrote after Israel's death and probably did not have first hand knowledge.: An awfully long sentence. Consider splitting?
Done.
  • Giving children Old Testament Hebrew names: again, should be obvious, but might want to explicate that this refers to the name "Israel"
Done.
  • Wood has revived: the wording makes it sound recent. As of?
The reference makes clear that it was in books published in 2007 and 2010. I am not sure it is necessary to give the date in the article.
The longer the article survives, the more such a wording will be out of date. See WP:RECENTISM. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 21:06, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Added "In 2007"
  • Æthelstan's biographer, Sarah Foot: was she Æthelstan's only biographer?
Yes she is.
  • {{Reflist|2}}: specifying hard columns like this isn't kind to larger or smaller screens—on large screens it leaves a lot of white space, and on small screens it can get squishy; specifying a column width (say 20em, 30em, 40em) allows browsers themselves to choose an appropriate number of columns.
I do not understand ems. Can you advise which I should choose?
An "em" is the width of the letter M in a given font. Any of them "work". Playing around, 25em looks good to me, but I wouldn't try too hard to "optimize" the width, because not everyone views the page with the same font. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 21:06, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Changed to 25em. Thanks. Dudley Miles (talk) 21:40, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

———Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 04:06, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for the review. Dudley Miles (talk) 13:06, 1 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A fine article, one I'm glad to support. Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 00:40, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks very much. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:45, 2 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A few passing comments. I've made a few minor tweaks to the article directly with explanatory edit summaries, which I hope make sense.

  • Do we need the "sources" section at all? The last sentence duplicates the references; you mention "Gospel Dice" later on anyway; you mention works of his later on anyway; you could easily add a few more words to the "early life" section to explain Flodoard and Ruotgar's mentions, and then remove the whole section.
  • If the sources section is kept, it struck me as a bit odd to have it so early in the article, before we've even been introduced to Israel.
Section deleted.
  • "Ruotger's life of Bruno" - any chance of a link to tell us who either of these people are?
He is linked in the lead. As it seems to be preferred practice to link again on first mention in the body, I have amended accordingly. There are further details about Bruno in Later life, where they are more relevant. There is no article on Ruotger, although he probably should have one.
  • Do we need the full Lapidge quote in the early life section? The first sentence is redundant to what the article has just told us, and the second sentence can be paraphrased or shortened. Setting it out in full gives it confusing emphasis because (1) the article goes on to say that Lapidge doesn't in fact agree with the consensus of modern scholarship, and (2) his is not the only view. You could say something like "Lapidge states that while the modern consensus is that Israel was Irish, the matter has not been properly considered and the evidence points towards him being Breton. He argues that the bishop..."
I have deleted the first sentence. I do not understand your objection to the second sentence - perhaps you could see whether it looks OK now.
  • Do we have an article anywhere about the bishops/diocese of Bangor, County Down? I can't see anything, which surprises me slightly
I cannot find anything. It appears to have been a very obscure diocese and may have been short lived.
  • In the next section, you say "Dub Innse, who died in 853, was bishop of Bangor in County Down, Ireland" but you've already told us who Dub Innse was in the previous section.
  • Didn't he in fact die in 953?
Uh yes! I have deleted the whole sentence as superfuous. His death date is not important.
  • "Æthelwold, Bishop of Winchester" - is this Æthelwold of Winchester? If so, we have an article about him; he also wasn't bish of Winch at the time, so perhaps reword to say that he became this later?
Yes he is and he is linked earlier as the future bishop. I have deleted the repetition of 'Bishop of Winchester'.
  • Scholarship: "In the 870s Anastasius the Librarian had to edit his own translation of his translation from Greek" - you've lost me!
Amended to make it clearer - hopefully! I was trying to illustrate how unusual knowledge of Greek was in the period, but I can delete it if the comment seems too tangential.
  • "commented on them in a manuscript" - commented on "him"?
Changed to 'his works'.

That's all on the prose, I think. BencherliteTalk 09:47, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your very helpful review. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:45, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Thank you for your prompt response, I'm happy with what you've done. BencherliteTalk 19:54, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks very much. Dudley Miles (talk) 21:18, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note -- Image review, anyone? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:40, 12 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Only two images, both of medieval manuscripts long out of copyright and appropriately tagged as PD. Photographs presumably taken by the uplooader (perhaps Dudley Miles would add this for clarity). I've added ISBN but a page number from the book for each image would be good too. Otherwise image review looks ok to me. BencherliteTalk 17:23, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks very much. I have added my name as photographer. I had to take the book back to the London Library but I will check page numbers next time I can get there. Dudley Miles (talk) 20:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's good enough for me, unless anyone else can spot anything blindingly obvious that I've missed? BencherliteTalk 20:58, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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