Talk:Stanford Memorial Church/GA1

GA Review

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Comments

In comparing this article to the GA Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, there are a few queries that arise. Is it possible to have a history of use of the church in regards to past ministry as well as past music ministry. With such a notable organ or selection of 3 organs, there should be some musical claim to fame regarding the people associated with using the organs. With a large gallery of pictures (many unlabelled) there could be some prose about the windows themselves possibly as in the aformentioned article. In the lead there is no mention or introduction given to the use of the church...ie the multidenominational feature. Is there any follow up to the claim of the pipe organ which has the unusual ability to play in either equal or just temperament. Is there any information from the Historic American Building Survey (HABS). These last two point were raised in the deletion discussion as notability for the church, but don't seem to be in the article itself. SriMesh | talk 03:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry it's taken me so long to get to this. I've accomplished some of your suggestions, like improve the images and added some about the church's "use". However, I think that to complete these suggestions, I need to do some more extensive research and writing. I suspect that the GAN will expire before I find the time. If so, I'll resubmit the nom at a later time, when the article is more ready. Thanks for the suggestions for improvement. --Figureskatingfan (talk) 20:51, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe that I have now addressed all the comments above by SriMesh. I have included the history of past and present ministries of the church, done by expanding the staff section and bringing more of the bios of the deans and organist. I wasn't able to find anything about the "musical claim to fame" with the organists. I suppose if people want to know more about the current organist, Robert Huw Morgan, they can look at his Stanford bio or at his webpage, which I included in the new External links section. All the images in this article are now labeled. There's actually quite a lot of prose about the stained glass windows already. I beefed up the non-denominational nature of the church, and made it more prominent in the lead, as requested.

I also beefed up some info about the Fisk-Nanney organ, but the challenge for me, not being a musician, is the exact wording. For example, the webpage for Stanford's Office for Religious Life doesn't say anything about "equal or just temperament", and not knowing anything about that myself, I included what the source said, that it uses "dual temperaments". Perhaps someone with some expertise can improve it.

Finally, I included the HABS report about the church in the External links section. I hope that this satisfies the concerns addressed. Thanks for the input; I believe that they've improved this article a great deal. --Figureskatingfan (talk) 06:57, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Article Passed

Good morning User:Figureskatingfan. I have finished my review of Stanford Memorial Church and have passed the article to GA status. Let me begin by saying, you have done a great job in researching, - citing – referencing and writing the piece and should be commended for the time and effort you placed into the article. However, I do have a few suggestions concerning the flow and structure of certain paragraphs and headings. I would mention in the opening paragraph the design architect. Likewise, in the history section. I would move the paragraph, starting with “In 1898”, up in this section. In addition, I would just use a sentence or two mentioning the earthquakes, than breakout the explanation of the damaged caused by the quakes into a separate heading. Also, I would like to see an expansion and separate heading with regards to the history and use of the organs.

As I stated in my opening remarks, you have done a great job. I believe with some expansion, and a few tweaks here and there, you may be able to get this to Feature Article status. Good luck to you and again, nice work. ShoesssS ^Talk 13:11, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Shoessss, thanks for the pass, and for your kind words. In the past few days, between dealing with a nasty case of strep throat, I've worked on some improvements to this article as per your remarks above. I've mentioned the architect in the lead. I've moved the "In 1898" section as you suggest, and created a new section, "Earthquakes". I haven't been able to tackle expanding content regarding the organs, though, but will do so, based upon information on the Stanford website, probably in the next few days. I suspect by that point, it will be long enough to warrant breaking off into a separate section as you suggest.

I'm kinda surprised that you think that this article is FA-worthy. One of the reasons I submitted for GA is that I believed that it simply doesn't have the potential to become a FA. I'm not sure that it can be expanded any further. It could use some expertise, from an editor who actually attended Stanford and has actually visited the church. That's not me--my education occurred at lowly CSUs. We'll see what happens. --Figureskatingfan (talk) 06:08, 20 November 2008 (UTC)