Archive:Approvals Committee/Announcements

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2018

Moving forward

Let us go to Discussion section of the Approvals Committee for further evaluations. Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 20:35, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Getting started

Let us start slowly with the two articles listed below. Plan on voting on Thursday, January 18, 2018. Keep discussion in this section.

Previously nominated article for consideration: Cowdray House

I just looked through the Cowdray House article and was impressed by the degree of detail and apparent scholarship involved. On the other hand, I couldn't see any *obvious* reasons about why this *lengthy* article was created. And I'm very much of an "inclusionist" in general -- if someone wants to write an article about anything except the most *trivial* item, then I'm for it. I then looked at the Wikipedia article about the same subject. I truly *hate* to say this, but I think the WP article is far superior. It is nowhere near as lengthy, but at least in the *first* paragraph it tells us WHY this ruin is noteworthy. And it leaves OUT a lot of minute details, so that the more *important* ones can be discerned by a reader whose interest in the subject is very close to zero. I certainly would not vote to *remove* this article, but, as you can tell, I have a notable lack of enthusiasm for it. Hayford Peirce (talk) 01:13, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

This appears to me to be a good article, comprehensive without being over-specialised. If I suddenly took an interest in Cowdray House, it would, I think, tell me much of what I wanted to know, and the bibliography would give further guidance. I have checked one or two of the facts, in the course of which I discovered that William Fitzwilliam was one of the great figures of Henry VIII's reign whom hardly anyone pays any attention to. The links in the references are working. The Related Articles sub-page had nothing on it, but I have added some links on the basis of the metadata. I think the article could be approved. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 17:34, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I certainly yield to your expertise on this subject but I wonder if we, as Editors here to pass judgment on articles, can do any editing to the said articles *before* judging them? For instance, in the Cowdray House article, one of my pet bugaboos, "which" being used incorrectly instead of "that" jumps out at me in the very first line. Can I change that? Also, I *do* think that this lede paragraph from Wikipedia definitely conveys more important information than the far longer CZ lede.

Cowdray House consists of the ruins of one of England's great Tudor houses, architecturally comparable to many of the great palaces and country houses of that time....It was largely destroyed by fire on 24 September 1793, but the ruins have nevertheless been Grade I listed.

Can I add some of that info to *our* lede, or must we leave it the way it is? In any case, if the consensus of the two others is that this article should be approved, I shall certainly not stand in the way. Hayford Peirce (talk) 20:32, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Who knows? We seem to be making up the rules as we go along. I certainly had no qualms about making minor syntactical changes to the article before making my comments, but I would think that if one makes substantial changes, then it becomes partly one's own article, which could disqualify one from judging it. Then the question is, what is "substantial"? Personally, I don't think that a better summary at the beginning is substantial. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 10:33, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Okay, then I will seize the bull by the horns, or suit the action to the word, or some such.... Hayford Peirce (talk) 23:34, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

According to our guidelines, we can make edits that would improve the article; we are not disqualified from approving it if we make it better to render it approvable. Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 01:03, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Howard that the Wikipedia article is superior in many ways to ours: better organized, more coherent, more references.I think more work should be done on the article, including reviewing WP's references that we don't use to see if they have more to add and whether we should incorporate them into our article. At present I would vote no, but I will keep an open mind if further discussion persuades me otherwise, but not so open that my brain falls out. Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 01:30, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I think there is need for a general discussion about comparisons with Wikipedia. To my mind, the only use for such comparison is to help us get round the fact that the three of us are unlikely to be informed on most of the topics, including this one. It so happens that when Hayford directed attention to it, I thought the WP article not even basic, as it contains no description, which "our" article does. However, Cowdray House is not a topic I would devote much time to, and as I am clearly going to be outvoted, I will not pursue the matter. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 21:02, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

As I said before, I have no strong feelings about it either way. Bringing up Wikipedia, of course, as I did, adds another dimension of complexity to an already complex situation. Whether we like it or not, I think that comparisons with WP articles are going to be inevitable in many cases. This may or may not be a Good Thing, but I think we're going to have to deal with it. I'm biased, of course, but I think that any impartial judge would find that the recent articles about P.G. Wodehouse novels that I've first imported from WP and then thoroughly redone are clearly superior to the original ones at WP. As for the Cowdray House articles in the two sites, I would really have to spend HOURS of study in order to evaluate each of them and then, I imagine, spend countless MORE hours trying to blend the best parts of each into a final article for CZ. Which my two fellow committee members might then find many things to object to. In this way, I think, lies madness. With THIS particular article, I would be happy to concur with what the two of you wanted to do about, IF there was a consensus between you. If you can come to one, then I will make whatever you decide unanimous. Hayford Peirce (talk) 17:52, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Let's formally vote on this one. I vote no. Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 23:23, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Anthony that the article could use some more work -- it's certainly not a BAD article, and a lot of work has obviously gone into it, but to become a "citable", closed to further editing, article, I don't think that it is quite there. So I also vote no. Hayford Peirce (talk) 23:47, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Should we put a note to this effect on a sub-page of the article? --Martin Wyatt (talk) 19:55, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

A good question. We probably ought to have SOME sort of a paper trail for readers to look at if we've done anything at all about the article in question, whether negatively or positively. Hayford Peirce (talk) 20:59, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I will indicate on the article's Talk page that the Approvals Committee voted not to approve the article, and will give a link to this discussion. Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 23:32, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Previously approved article for re-evaluation: Acid rain/Citable Version

I understood this article. The main bar to my understanding was the use of the word "species" in relation to aluminium, but I got the drift. The article also corrected some misunderstandings of the issue that I had previously. More than that I cannot say. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 19:00, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

I found this article to be excellent in all respects, and will vote for it to remain approved and citable. If we vote similarly, I would ask John to label it "Version 1 Date September 11, 2013" at the top of the page. Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 23:27, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I would suggest that the Main Article be updated to bring it up to 2018; Google Scholar lists 18,000 articles since 2014.Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 00:00, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

It looks pretty scholarly to me, and I checked the previous history of it -- apparently the late lamented Milton did a lot of work on it -- that's good enough for me. I will vote for it, and will leave it up to John and the others to decide how they want to label it. Hayford Peirce (talk) 00:21, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Ok, I will take it that we all agree to keep the article as is. We don't have to wait until the 18th to formally vote. Anthony.Sebastian (talk) 23:17, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Good, two items out of the way! Hayford Peirce (talk) 23:49, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

About the Committee

The Approvals Committee is responsible for the assessment of Citizendium articles. Members also use the discussions page.

The Committee comprises two Editors and one Author. Since January 2018 its members have been:

• Hayford Peirce (Editor)
• Anthony.Sebastian (Editor)
• Martin Wyatt (Author)

Articles

Articles approved before 2018 to evaluate

The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.

Calls for Removal

Policy for names in articles

Somewhere, I'm sure, CZ either has a clearly spelled-out policy on how proper names are supposed to be spelled in the actual names of articles, or, failing that, there is probably an acrimonious discussion about it somewhere, with, I'm equally sure, Howard Berkowitz contributing at great length. There are, I would say, two principle points of view: a person's name should be spelled as he or she actually spelled it themselves, ie, the great tennis player of the 1950s, Pancho Gonzales, who apparently was *born* with this spelling, but who later changed it, at his wife's insistence, to Gonzalez. Today he is generally called Gonzalez in such publications as The New York Times and Sports Illustrated. The other viewpoint is to spell the name by the generally accepted modern usage. This would give us Shakespeare and Sir Walter Raleigh instead of a myriad of contemporary spellings for the playwright and Ralegh for the privateer. I myself can see the merit of both arguments, but think that we ought to have a policy that clearly spells it out one way or the other. Hayford Peirce (talk) 17:25, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Where there are variations on names, most choices will be contentious, particularly in the case of transcription from other alphabets. My own particular prejudice is against the use of titles, which is why I started an article with the name Walter Scott, instead of Sir Walter (and was irritated to find an article with the title of Lord Byron). Personally, I don't think the form of the name matters much, as long as there are adequate redirects. --Martin Wyatt (talk) 19:50, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

You're right, of course: lots of Redirects resolve just about any problem. Even though Sir Walter Scott is almost ALWAYS referred to with the "Sir", at least here in the States, Lord Byron seems a trickier case to me. If you said to a reasonably educated person, "I hated having to read Keats, Shelley, and Byron when I was at school," he/she would know precisely whom you meant. If on the other hand, you said, out of the blue, "I wonder if Byron would be a good role model for my son?", I would probably have to stop and think about that for a moment. "Byron, Byron, Tom Byron, the boyish-looking porn star of years ago?" Eventually I'd think of *Lord* Byron, yes. I could, of course be wrong about all this. But I *do* think that in spite of what I say about "Byron", we SHOULD have a hard and fast rule. Either titles are allowed, or they're not. Yes or no. Redirects will do the rest. Hayford Peirce (talk) 20:08, 20 January 2018 (UTC)