Wikipedia:Peer review/Herbert Armitage James/archive1

Herbert Armitage James

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A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for May 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it's a Good Article already, and I wonder what more would need to happen to make it a Featured Article.

Thanks, Bencherlite ^Talk 15:05, 5 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is cleanly-written and readable and well-structured. At the end, though, I feel that I don't know much about this man. The article is filled with praise for him, but most of it is general. Quoting praises such as "one of the greatest and most forceful characters who had ever devoted himself to education" or "brilliantly successful, raising the school in the 11 years of his reign to a pitch of all-round excellence which it had not known before" or "remarkable scholastic career" or "great and powerful influence" are honorific snippets that lack specifics. What's missing from those quotes and from the article itself is a level of detail about his life and work that would allow the reader to form judgments from evidence rather than being told, in effect, what to think. For example, what exactly did he do to raise Rossall to "a pitch of all-round excellence which it had not known before"? Did the math grades go up? Or what?

The hissing and booing by students at the end of James' first year is the only dark thing in this biography, but generally people in high places (or low) don't live a whole life without encountering difficulty, controversy, and plenty of dark things. I wondered what made the students hiss and boo. After that, I wondered what else might have happened in this man's life that was not "brilliantly successful". Surely, since he seems to have held firm opinions and "never dealth in the fine shades", he must have been involved in controversy now and again. What I am getting at here is that the portrait of the man seems strangely incomplete. I don't know what else might have been written about him, but my first thought if I were working on the article would be to look for other sources that might flesh him out a bit more.

Lead

"to a pitch of all-round excellence which it had not known before" - It's standard practice to provide a source for direct quotes directly after the end punctuation of the quoted material. Ditto for any other direct quotations in the lead or elsewhere.

Infobox

I believe the caption should read Herbert Armstrong James rather than Dr. James.

Early life and education

Deciding whether a word is a common noun or a proper noun can be difficult. In this section alone, nouns that are capitalised include Standing Committee, Literae Humaniores (which needs italics since it is Latin), Bachelor of Divinity, Doctor of Divinity, and University. I'd be inclined to treat these as common nouns, especially "standing committee" and "university", about which I think there is no question. I can't quickly find a specific MoS guideline for each of these, but The Associated Press Stylebook treats "bachelor of arts" and parallel constructions as common nouns and WP:MOSCAP#Institutions says "university" is a common noun in the way that you have used it in the last sentence of this section. I see another instance in "In 1918, during his time as college President, his photograph was taken for inclusion... " in the next section. Here "president" is being used as a common noun and should be lowercase. You might check the whole article to catch and fix any others like these.

Teaching career

"When Dr Percival was appointed Bishop of Hereford... " - John Percival is preferred on first use, then Percival on subsequent uses, per the Manual of Style. I believe the "Dr" is an academic title covered by WP:CREDENTIAL, and in any case the first name, if known, should be used on first use. Ditto for Viscount Cave in the lead or any similar construction.
"it was said that the school had "seldom stood higher since Arnold's day" than under his leadership. - "Arnold" should not be linked inside the direct quote, per WP:MOSQUOTE. I'd also suggest adding his first name, Thomas, here inside square brackets to indicate that it was not part of the original, thus: [Thomas] Arnold. If you want to link to Thomas Arnold, you could add a sentence explaining who he was.

St Johns College

WP:MOSQUOTE suggests using blockquotes rather than fancy quotes for quotations of four lines or longer. Also, I'd recommend plain text rather than italics here since the blockquotes provide enough emphasis.

Images

I would recommend cropping the extraneous writing from the lead image and re-uploading a clean version.
Captions consisting of sentence fragments alone don't need terminal periods per WP:CAP#Wording.

I hope these comments prove helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 20:52, 9 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments; I'm taking a break from major editing at the moment, but will take up some of your suggestions in due course. The major problem is tracking down more sources to flesh out the bones, alas. Regards, Bencherheavy (talk) 21:25, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]