Wikipedia:Peer review/Belair Mansion/archive1

Belair Mansion

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I've listed this article for peer review because its historic significance as both the Colonial Governor's mansion as well as the cradle of American Thoroughbred Racing, home of the Belair Stud. I've done extensive research and editing and would like to take the article to GA status. Thanks, Toddst1 (talk) 21:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style. If you would find such a review helpful, please click here. Thanks, APR _t 02:13, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Doncram comment 1 I find my way here in response to a request to Assess the Belair Mansion article that was posted in Assessment subpage of the wp:nrhp WikiProject. The one comment that I can make now is that, although the article appears very good and has multiple sources, one source that it is lacking is the official NRHP "Inventory/Nomination" or "Registration" documents (text, photos, and sometimes also correspondence) for the site. These are often 20-30 page write-ups by a historian and further editors, and often include invaluable information describing a property, its historical significance, and specifics on boundaries of what is covered in the NRHP registration, including pieces that cannot be found elsewhere. I want to highly recommend your obtaining these documents, which are free, by request to the National Register Reference Team at nr_register at nps.gov, providing your postal address. I requested a set for another property recently and was told it is currently taking about 2-3 weeks for copies of these documents to be provided. For NRHP sites that are also NHLs, these documents are scanned and available on-line at the NPS, and for some states they are provided by a State website (but I don't know about Maryland), so your best bet is just to put in the request. In terms of assessment, I am personally requesting that articles reflect these documents before receiving higher ratings within WP:NRHP. Again, nice work on the article. Hope this helps, doncram (talk) 23:36, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the tip - will do immediately. Toddst1 (talk) 23:44, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully you have asked or will ask for the NRHP docs for the separate NRHP that is the stables (refnum 73002163) associated with the mansion (refnum 77001520), too. The article should explicitly address the separate NRHP of the stables, I believe you would agree, including mention of its 1973 NRHP listing before the mansion's listing in 1977. The alternative would be develop a separate, linked article on the stables and relating the two articles to one another. If a section on the stables turns out to be very large, then that could be split off as a main article, eventually, however. doncram (talk) 14:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Double-checking, I find there is an article Belair Stable Museum already existing, to which Belair Stables is a redirect, and I see that you do have a link to this from the "Today" section of the mansion article. Well, that article should be developed simultaneously and considered as part of this same peer review, I believe. It is impossible to consider the contribution of the mansion to horse-racing, without considering this article and where the bulk of material on horse-racing as opposed to mansion details should be. It seems the importance of the mansion is largely related to the importance of the stables. doncram (talk) 15:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have requested the documents for both sites. You raise a good point. There's also a related article on Belair Stud Thanks! Toddst1 (talk) 15:52, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Belair Stud article, despite its name, seems to be about the stables and should be merged with the museum article material into an article titled Belair Stables (currently a redirect to the museum article). The Belair Stud article oughta be about the horse and line of horses, or it ought to be deleted, IMHO. I commented along these lines just now on Talk:Belair Stud. doncram (talk) 15:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Doncram comment 2 The referencing in the article is fairly extensive and precise. It appropriately gives page numbers in references. The reference links are constructed as complete new references with just the page number changed, however, so the references section then appears somewhat bloated and there is unnecessary duplication (although most of that duplication is not visible to the reader). I suggest you adopt the two-section style of referencing using "Notes" and "Bibliography" (or you could call it "Notes" and "References") as used in Joseph Priestley House, an NRHP article recently promoted to Featured Article. doncram (talk) 15:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also I second several of the comments of the automated peer review, namely:

"Please expand the lead to conform with guidelines at Wikipedia:Lead. The article should have an appropriate number of paragraphs as is shown on WP:LEAD, and should adequately summarize the article."
"Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), headings generally do not start with articles ('the', 'a(n)'). For example, if there was a section called ==The Biography==, it should be changed to ==Biography==." The section now titled "The Woodward Era" section should be retitled.
"As per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), please do not link words in headings." Drop the link to Civil War in one heading, and another link in another heading.

Those automated peer review suggestions have been available for a few days. You can go ahead and make changes in the article to address those suggestions and any other suggestions made here, and reply here when those issues are resolved. doncram (talk) 15:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]