Wikipedia:Featured article review/Henry VIII of England/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was removed 09:25, 7 February 2007.

Henry VIII of England

Review commentary

Messages left at Emsworth, Bio, Royalty, UK notice board, Ireland and Scotland. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was browsing through the article, and noticed a certain lack of inline citations. From what small knowledge I have on FA status, you have to have ample amounts of these as one of the requirements, and for that fact, even GA status. I suggest getting some more inline citations, if this article is to maintain that status. --Artega 06:13, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid that's a misunderstanding of FA status. The relevant FA criterion states that claims made in Featured Articles must be "supported with specific evidence and external citations (see verifiability and reliable sources); this involves the provision of a "References" section in which sources are set out and, where appropriate, complemented by inline citations. See citing sources." At Citing sources, we find this simple guideline: "Attribution is required for direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged." It is also generally desirable to provide inline citations for specific matter that (a) would be difficult for an interested reader to verify, even after considering the general and/or plainly pertinent sources set out in the References section, and (b) contributors have discovered is reported incorrectly elsewhere in a major source or in multiple minor ones. The project's FA standards in no way suggest that uncontroversial claims readily verifiable in various standard works in a field should be cited, just as such claims are not cited in most serious scholarly works.

In short, the gross amount of inline citations is completely irrelevant to FA status. Some of the best articles on Wikipedia have relatively few inline citations. The fact that whole paragraphs, even in succession, have no inline citations is again irrelevant to FA status. See, for example, Wikipedia's superb Featured Article on the sun, specifically the section on its atmosphere. Wikipedia contributors should not be pressured into "getting some more inline citations" just for the sake of it. The objective should be to identify those specific claims that require citation and to provide the best citations possible.

In this specific case, the article has a decent, though hardly exemplary References section. As available, full information should be consistently provided for all sources of each type. The fact that the article has just one specific citation does raise a couple questions. Those questions are: As you have initiated this review, did you actually find any specific claims dubious or counterintuitive or confusing or contradicted by your own knowledge? Did you try to verify any information in the article via the sources provided in the References section and find that that it was difficult or impossible? Here's something I picked up on in a quick dip: Henry "earned a golden rose from the Pope as early as 1510." Did he earn it in in 1510 or do we only know that he earned it some time and could have earned it that early? Is the sentence badly phrased or do scholars disagree? If the sentence is correct as is, it definitely needs to be elaborated on, either in the main text or in an inline-cited note. Many paragraphs in the article contain nothing but straightforward historical information of the most readily verifiable sort and do not call for citation. The quality of the writing (as suggested by my example) seems to be a clearer problem.—DCGeist 08:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with your argument against citing every fact, though this article lacks any citation whatsoever. Indeed, the writing is extremely poor and it appears that it has mostly declined through vandalism. My suggestion would be to either revert this to Lord Emsworth's nominated version or rewrite it alltogether. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 14:39, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's quite an essay. Not to worry about the nomination, Artega; past reviews of Emsworth's articles have revealed prose problems and deficiencies with the overriding policy, which is WP:V. If someone is willing to work on the article, we can go through and put cite needed tags on specific areas requiring verification, but reviewers here are reluctant to tag articles unless someone is actually going to begin doing the work, and we've found few takers on Emsworth's old articles. Perhaps DCGeist misunderstands the underlying policy of WP:V? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps. What does it strike you that I misunderstand?

I didn't argue that Artega's nomination of the article for review was inappropriate. I made an effort to explain that the lack of inline citations should not be the initial focus of review and that "getting some more inline citations" is never the appropriate way to think about improving an article. Perhaps I should have stated more clearly the point I'm sure we all agree on: the fact that an article has no specific citations and a messy approach to referencing likely indicates that it has other, more serious, deficiencies that render it below FA quality. I didn't mean to imply that Artega was mistaken to initiate a review; I did want to know if, having made the effort to do so, Artega had identified any specific problems beneath the general observation about the article's lack of citations. With little time and effort and no specific knowledge, I identified such a problem. With apparently little effort, Kirill has now identified at least one and a very serious one at that. Disputed accuracy tag placed on article--all readers should be completely wary of the article's fact basis in its current state. And, indeed, we know that as a consequence of Artega's nomination.—DCGeist 20:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, there seem to be obvious factual errors present here. For example, the "Early reign" section starts off by incorrectly having Francis I ruling France in 1512 in place of Louis XII, and goes downhill from there; this needs to be thoroughly checked over by people familiar with the material. Kirill Lokshin 17:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Going through the article in more detail, there are a number of major inaccuracies and omissions at least with regards to Henry's foreign policy (which happens to be the aspect of his reign I'm familiar with; I have no idea if the other topics have similar problems):

The Holy League of 1511 was, as I've already mentioned, formed against Louis XII, not Francis I; the comments about Francis competing with Henry are, obviously, not relevant to it.
Henry made peace with Louis in 1513–14, before Francis had ascended the throne. The Field of the Cloth of Gold—which was, indeed, a meeting between Henry and Francis—was obviously not part of the negotiations involved here; it was rather a prelude to the next war. The article makes no mention of Henry's role in the Imperial election of 1519, and its relation to all of this.
(More broadly, this entire section is pretty devoid of context; Henry was getting involved in the Italian Wars here, not randomly attacking France.)
Henry's role in the Italian War of 1521—and his resulting switch to the French side in the War of the League of Cognac—is glossed over, being presented as some sort of private arrangement with the Pope.
Henry's foreign policy in the 1540's—the Rough Wooing, the Italian War of 1542, etc.—is completely absent from the article.

I would say that at least those areas of the article need substantial work if this is to be an FA. Kirill Lokshin 21:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And there we go. By shifting the review focus from "getting citations" to analysis of specific content, Kirill has efficiently demonstrated that the article as it stands is well below FA quality. Unless a knowledgeable editor steps in to adopt the article in short order, it should move expeditiously to FARC.—DCGeist 22:06, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I thank you all for taking the time to comment on it. Given, the requests now for changes are nothing of what I wanted the FAR to be about, but I completly understand your reasoning behind what you said, and can agree that inline citations alone shouldn't be the reason for calling an FAR. In any case, some major editing has to be done if the article is to maintain FA status.-Artega 01:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Lack of citations is always a reason for calling for review, although not necessarily a reason for demoting (two different issues :-) If the article had been cited, you wouldn't have needed a domain expert to know it wasn't accurate (the point of WP:V is you would have been able to verify the accuracy yourself). Further, older FAs lacking citations almost always have other problems. It just happens that, having been through a number of Emsworth's older FAs aleady, many here are already aware of the problems with article deterioration over time (he no longer watches them), so all of his uncited FAs will likely be appearing here eventually. Without citations, they will be demoted, for the very reason that readers have no means of verifying accuracy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:43, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I note that in the article on Henry VIII, Anne of Cleves' brother Wilhelm is said to be a Protestant, while in her own article, he is said to be "personally" a Catholic. I don't think that the article on him states anything. Other sources that I checked describe him as "mildly Protestant" and "not a Lutheran." (I'm still digging) Anne's and Wilhelm's brother-in-law, Johann Frederick I, Elector of Saxony was an ardent Lutheran and head of the Protestant Confederation of Germany (the Schmalkaldic League), so it may be their relationship with him that was more important in allying Henry VIII with the German Protestant Princes. By the way, I have had trouble finding the articles on both brother and sister, except by going in through Henry VIII. - Beth RootJuglice25A 11:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are lack of citations and factual accuracy (1c). Marskell 20:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Remove per 1c.LuciferMorgan 01:05, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Remove, no effort to address concerns raised above. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Remove, nothing has changed from above. Trebor 23:50, 4 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.