Wikipedia:Peer review/Catherine, Princess of Wales/archive1

Catherine, Princess of Wales

I've listed this article for peer review because I need to know the community's opinion on it before I send it to FAC for a second time. The first FAC was archived due to lack of general support, weak sourcing and prose issues. Since then, additional book sources have been introduced within the article, material has been trimmed and previous sources have been replaced with higher quality ones as and when needed.

Thanks, MSincccc (talk) 13:18, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Comments from Tim riley

A few thoughts after a quick canter through the article:

• "has played a significant role in various charitable activities" – this is the first of five "significant"s in the text. There is good advice in Plain Words: This is a good and useful word, but it has a special flavour of its own and it should not be thoughtlessly used as a mere variant of important, considerable, appreciable, or quite large ... it ought to be used only where there is a ready answer to the reader's unspoken question 'Significant, is it? And what does it signify?
• "Her paternal family benefited financially from trust funds; her great-grandparents Noël and Olive Middleton, played host to members of the British royal family in the 1920s through to the 1940s" – three points here: (i) the semicolon leads one to suppose that the second part of the sentence is connected in some way to the first, but that doesn't seem to be the case here, (ii) you don't want the comma before "played", as this phrase is used restrictively (unless they were her only great-grandparents, which seems improbable) and (iii) is there any other way than financially to benefit from trust funds?

1) Replaced with a colon.

2) Dropped comma 3) These trust funds primarily offered financial benefits. Additionally, the Middleton family had other social and professional advantages. For instance, members of the family, such as solicitor Henry Dubs Middleton and Gertrude Middleton, attended prestigious institutions like Charterhouse and the University of Oxford. They also held significant social positions, with Noël Middleton hosting members of the British royal family and co-founding the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra​

• "The couple was given the country home Anmer Hall... Following their marriage in 2011, the couple used Nottingham Cottage" – you need to decide whether "couple" is a singular or a plural noun. Either is acceptable – I believe singular is more common in AmE and plural in BrE – but you should be consistent one way or the other.

Using the plural form that is more common in British English.

• "mentioned in a personal letter released by Kensington Palace the previous day that she is still undergoing treatment for cancer" – past tense is called for here.

Done

• "The meeting was well-received" – when a phrase is used as a predicative adjective it should not have a hyphen (although if used attributively, as in "It was a well-received meeting" the hyphen is in order).

Done

• "marking their first visit to the region since becoming Duke and Duchess of Cornwall" – this is the first we've heard of their becoming Duke and Duchess of Cornwall. Few readers will know that the title is automatic for the heir apparent to the throne: a line of explanation is wanted here.

Done

• "Former royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter" – clunky tabloidese false title here.

Done

I can't pretend I read the entire text as thoroughly as I would normally do when reviewing an article: I found the exhaustive detail sapping my will to live part of the way through the Charity Work section. But I hope these few comments are helpful. Tim riley talk 12:16, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

@Tim riley Thanks for your time and suggestions. Please do let me know if you have any further suggestions for me. Looking forward to your response to the above responses. Regards. MSincccc (talk) 14:21, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Congratulations and suggestion

There is not a lot of engagement here. First, let me congratulate you: it is admirable to improve an article to GA level, which this is, and since WP is a volunteer project, one could say, OK, we promoted it to GA, and that is good enough for now. To then progress toward FA, I am going to say something that is intended as constructive, and I hope you do not take offense. First: Wikipedia is not a sprint, it's a marathon. To promote an article to the FA level, one needs to slow down and be more thorough -- this is a hard pill for newer editors (or those newer to FAC) to swallow. The prose on the article is just not FA quality, the research and comprehensiveness is suspect, and when people have given comments at FAC and above, I feel that the response has not been thoughtful, but rather has been designed to do the least that might be necessary to make it appear that you have taken the comment. What I think you can do is go back over all the FAC comments (as well as Tim's above), again: *slow down!* and look at them anew, and address them more thoroughly and thoughtfully. Then, and this I think is essential to making this into a real FA-quality article: really hit the books to see if you can make substantial additions to the comprehensiveness of the article. This is not to create a longer, more boring list of every charity event that she has attended, but to find really interesting, encyclopedic things about her background, her marriage/family life/ hobbies, and the performance of her royal duties or other things she has done as part of her position. In particular, I remember asking about book references, and then another editor made a quick list of over a dozen books on Catherine that were not cited. The response was that (1) lots of those books suck; and (2) they don't have anything in them worthwhile. This was not the kind of response that FAC reviewers would hope for. What I think we wanted to see was: "I went to the library and spent significant time to do a de-novo search for the best books about Catherine, and here is a list of the best ones. We are working our way through them to find really interesting, encyclopedic (see WP:DUE) information about her that ought to be added to the article." These steps would encourage more people to spend their time to help you with the prose and, eventually, support the article's promotion at FAC. -- Ssilvers (talk) 19:50, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

@Ssilvers Thank you for your time and suggestions. I do not wish to rush the second FAC nomination, as I am seeking multiple peer reviews beforehand. Additionally, a new book by Robert Jobson on Catherine will be released on 6 August. Hence, I am willing to wait rather than hasten the next FAC. Please let me know if you have any further suggestions. Regards. MSincccc (talk) 07:22, 21 July 2024 (UTC)