Wiki143:Featured article candidates/Black Hawk War/archive1

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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 not promoted by Dabomb87 21:55, 14 September 2009 [1].

Black Hawk War

Nominator(s): — Rlevse • Talk • 23:18, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

{{Wikipedia:Featured article tools|1=Black Hawk War}}

I am nominating this for featured article because it is currently an GA and I feel it is now ready for FAC. — Rlevse • Talk • 23:18, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Comment. Done; thanks. Alt text is present; thanks. It needs some work, though:

  • The alt text "Painting of Chief Keokuk" needs to be reworded to describe the visual appearance of the image. "Painting of" is one of the phrases to avoid, and "Chief Keokuk" both repeats the caption and is not verifiable by a non-expert just by looking at the image.
    • Done. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:38, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Other phrases also have verifiability problems and need to be removed or reworded: "during the Black Hawk War", "Winfield Scott", "where the Spafford Farm massacre occurred", "at Horseshoe Bend", "replica of", "at Apple River".
    • Done. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:38, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
      • The last three phrases are still there, I'm afraid. I struck the rest. Eubulides (talk) 08:44, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Fixed last three. — Rlevse • Talk • 09:55, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
  • 46 images lack alt text; to see them, please click on the "alt text" button in the toolbox at the upper right of this review subpage. Almost all of them are tiny images that should be marked with "|link=" so that they do not need alt text, as per WP:ALT #Purely decorative images. You'll need to edit Template:Black Hawk War Map. The main image of that map should have alt text that gives the gist of what the map says; please see WP:ALT#Maps.

Eubulides (talk) 00:13, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

The article has about 12 images, how did you get 46? Will work on the rest of this....We're supposed to put in alt text for dots and x's? — Rlevse • Talk • 00:26, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
I see the issue. Fixed. –Juliancolton | Talk 00:51, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
It says there are still three things that need "|link=" but I can find them. Can someone help? — Rlevse • Talk • 01:09, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
I think there is confusion on |link=. This should be blanked only for decorative images such as flag icons and the like. If you blank the link on regular images, then you can't bring up the image page and check the attribution. The only place it should be blanked in this article is in the flag icon template, which already has it blanked. And the use of the one flag icon makes the infobox unbalanced. And the Template:Tl does not have an |alt= field as it uses full image syntax (it was a bad description to boot).
Alt text otherwise needs more work. Alt text consists of words that evoke the image. For example: "Photograph of a Major Isaiah Stillman in a suit with a big bowtie and large sideburns." It should be "Man with long sideburns wearing an old-fashioned suit and cravat." There is a new Altviewer tool to help with this.
The infobox shows the Ho-Chunk, Menominee and Potawatomi on the U.S. side and the Sauk, Fox and Kickapoo with Black Hawk. The content is rather confusing— the Ho-Chunk appear to be belligerents on the Black Hawk side.
---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:58, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Fixed the Ho-Chunk confusion. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
OK. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 00:35, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Fixed the Stillman alt. This alt tag stuff is all new to me. — Rlevse • Talk • 02:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Gadget850 is correct. The "link=" should only be used on images that are PD, otherwise we violate the image license. Stifle (talk) 08:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
I fixed the 3 images with missing "link=" and also tweaked the alt text capitalization for consistency. Thanks for writing the alt text, and we're almost done with it, I think. Some remaining problems that I noticed:
  • There are still some phrases (noted above, and not struck out) that fail the verifiability test for alt text. One new phrase with this problem is "American Army general".
  • The alt text for the locator map should give a brief big-picture summary of where the battles are, as this summary is not in the caption or adjacent text. Something like "The battles are clustered in northeast Illinois and southeast Wisconsin." perhaps.
  • It would be helpful for the File:Black Hawk marker.jpg alt text to transcribe what's on that plaque, as per WP:ALT#Text. The text is all legible to the sighted reader, after all.
Fixed all three. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:06, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Eubulides (talk) 08:44, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
OK, I tweaked a couple more WP:ALT#Verifiability problems I saw with the result. It looks good now. Thanks again. Eubulides (talk) 17:08, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Quick comment from Ruhrfisch (more to come in the next day or two). Per WP:MOS#Images, images should be set to thumb width to allow reader preferences to take over. For portrait format images, "upright" can be used to make the image narrower (the lead image and map images are exempt from this). Ruhrfisch ><>°° 02:40, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I was bold and removed pixel widths from several images, also made three upright, and change old "Image:" file names over to "File:" Ruhrfisch ><>°° 13:07, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Pardon me for jumping in, but the WP:MOS#Images does not say that all images should be set at default. In fact, it says: "A picture may benefit from a size other than the default.". Non-editors generally do not have preferences set. Madman (talk) 17:09, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, MOS:IMAGES lists several cases where it may be appropriate to use a non "thumb" or "upright" width and I did not see that it applied to the ones I changed. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 03:23, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Support I actually just read this article last week, because of the Sufjan Stevens song I'll admit, but I saw it was very well written. One thing I wasn't sure about, like was just said, were the image sizes. Be sure to use the "upright" tag for ones like Isaiah Stillman. There's also a one sentence paragraph before "Cholera epidemic" that could be combined into the one before it.-- Patrick {oѺ∞} 04:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Image check:
  • That's the only problem I could find. Stifle (talk) 08:42, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Fixed. — Rlevse • Talk • 09:53, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:25, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
Because what they say is supported by other refs. But rather than hash that all out, I deleted them. — Rlevse • Talk • 19:12, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Comments not quite the ancient history I prefer, but very interesting!
    • The info box image looks rather funny as it's a portrait in an infobox designed for a landscape picture. Perhaps an battle image could go there, with Black Hawk's picture moved to the body?
I have to disagree. It's named after him so I think it's appropriate. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:06, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
This is common placement for such templates. See the FA Boshin War — Rlevse • Talk • 22:09, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
    • "The land ceded in the treaty included the village of Saukenuk, but Black Hawk did not sanction the sale of this land and was determined to remain in his village." Maybe it should be made clearer early in the sentence that it's black hawk's village?
fixed. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:13, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
    • "The war would see a number of small skirmishes and "massacres"." Since massacres is in scare quotes, it's obviously showing some bias, but it's not made apparent. Perhaps a footnote explaining this styling?
fixed by removing the quotes, good catch. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:13, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
    • "The massacre was most likely perpetrated by Ho-Chunk warriors unaffiliated with Black Hawk's band.[20][28] It is also unlikely they had the sanction of their nation.[20][28] " This is one of a few areas in the text where the citations are unnecessarily doubled.
Just saw that on my own and fixed it. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:02, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
    • "The second half of June 1832 brought more battle; this time the militia would be dominant. " It could just be me, but this sentence sounds rather strange (more "battle" instead of "battles", and the militia being "dominant"? What does that mean?)
Cut that sentence entirely, it's not really necessary. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:16, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
    • "The Battle of Waddams Grove, also called the Battle of Yellow Creek occurred on June 18, 1832 near Yellow Creek in present-day Stephenson County, Illinois.[37][44] The fight became a bloody battle with bayonets and knives. " Another curious wording. We know it's a battle, so why should it be mentioned as becoming a "bloody battle". What makes it any more bloody than others? The fact that it became a close-quarters fight? We aren't expressly told that.
Did a copyedit. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:22, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
    • There's some places where alternate names slow down the flow of the text ("The Battle of Waddams Grove, also called the Battle of Yellow Creek", "The Battle of Bad Axe, also known as the Bad Axe Massacre,") which I think could be safetly cut.
Disagree about Yellow Creek as it's a totally different name, but agree on Bad Axe Massacre so I cut that one. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:22, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
    • I guess leading off on my earlier nitpicks it just seems like theres not unnecessary wording that's perhaps a bit too colored to be useful. I'm afraid I dn't have the time to fully go through the article, but these are just some general comments I hope you might be able to use. Martin Raybourne (talk) 21:44, 12 September 2009 (UTC)


Reference issues
  • <ref name=lewis3>Lewis, "Introduction."</ref> uses a duplicate name and no template
Fixed. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:51, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
  • <ref name=jung5> uses a duplicate name
Fixed. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:47, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
  • The article mixes the standard footnote system and shortened footnotes— it should use only one system.
This is called hybrid and perfectly legit, see FA William D. Boyce — Rlevse • Talk • 00:45, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 00:43, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

OK ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 00:46, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
NP. Hybrid uses harvbn for books and cite for others. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:51, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Works by James Lewis are defined as a reference in six instances. This results in the same HTML ID, which makes the HTML invalid.[2]

This is a technical issue that I am looking into fixing, but not a showstopper for FA. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:08, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, but that last edit you made generated an extra set of }} at the end of each footnote. — Rlevse • Talk • 13:36, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
Yeah— ain't cut & past grand? Anyway, I fixed it by using the |ref= parameter (which isn't documented). Every cite has an HTML id associated with it, and you can't have duplicate ids in a document. Template:Tl generates the id, then Template:Tl "simplifies" it, leaving us very open to duplicate ids. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:41, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Comment. Oppose. I notice that the two modern academic histories (books by Jung & Trask) are very sparsely cited, referencing only a handful of pages towards the end of each book, which may raise suspicions that the books were not actually read, but only glimpsed through Google Book Search. By comparison, the brief overview of the war on the Abraham Lincoln website is far more frequently cited. This does not appear to me to be a "thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature on the topic", as required by 1c. Should I worry that the article has not be thoroughly researched? —Kevin Myers 04:15, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

No. I tried use a multitude of sources to cover the many subtopics of the article. Note others have commented here and on the article talk it's well covered. The Lincoln site is currently used 9 times, Jung 8, and Trask 4; I don't consider that "far more frequently", certainly not in Jung's case. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:39, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
I count about 30 citations for the Lincoln site.
Your response gives me no confidence that the modern academic histories were read. Having some other Wikipedians say that an article is well-covered is no substitute for actually reading the scholarly books on the topic. Presumably, those editors haven't read the books either. So we really can't be sure what revelations or controversies are covered in the apparently unread pages of the books I mentioned. Similarity, a "multitude" of web sources is no substitute for a thorough reading of the modern academic histories. This is especially true when the subject is Native Americans, a topic that has seen a revolution in scholarship in the last 30 years. Therefore, I'll have to oppose for falling short of 1c, "well-researched". Sorry, and best of luck. —Kevin Myers 12:42, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Oppose I have to agree with Kevin Myers on this, and made a similar comment that the Jung book is not cited much about a month ago on the talk page. While I have not read the whole Jung book, I have read the chapter on the Bad Axe Massacre and it included material not in this article (or the Bad Axe article). I also note that this article needs to be consistent on whether or not British Band is in quotation marks. In the interest of full disclosure, I have made some edits here, mostly related to the map I made. Sorry, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 13:40, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm closing this nom. I added several Jung refs and you didn't even notice and opposing because one particular favorite ref of you two wasn't used? I regret wasting my time on this. — Rlevse • Talk • 21:26, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


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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