Timeline of Jane Austen
This peer review discussion has been closed.
Simmaren and Awadewit have started working on a series of articles about Jane Austen. This is the first in that series. We are planning on taking this to FLC, so please critique accordingly. We would like to thank all Janeites and non-Janeites in advance for their assistance on this project! Awadewit | talk 18:20, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
- A quick gripe - references 11, 16 and 18 don't have page references and surely can't all be from one page each, can they? I think FAC buffs might be a little put off by this. Seegoon ( talk) 12:30, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
- 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 04:45, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
- Just a quick look during my lunch hour... (I've no literary genes).
- The lead reads well and introduces the subject nicely. However, the third paragraph, on the historical context, ends a bit flat and the last sentence almost seems stuck-on rather than concluding the overview.
- When you've finished polishing, ask User:Brighterorange nicely to run his script to tidy up all the hyphen/ndash inconsistencies.
- The images embedded in the table have no caption (which is fine) but they should have some alt-text (for screen readers and also tooltips). You can supply this by adding "|some text here" to the end of the image spec. (You should really to this for the other literary timelines).
- Jack Lynch's "Eighteenth-Century Chronology" is a personal homepage. He may well be a learned professor, but this is still self-published. See
WP:SPS — I suspect the "in some circumstances" get-out-clause isn't relevant here as these are historical events that could be alternatively sourced.
- The events could be sourced to separate history books, but that would be tedious and unnecessary. I also wanted to make sure that the timeline retained some semblance of coherence - that I wasn't constructing the timelines myself out of thin air. Lynch's site is a good one - it is accessible to people reading on the web and is recommended by the moderators of the primary 18th-century listserv in academia (see here). Since the author is an academic, the site is recommended by other academics (and this is not the only site - it is recommended frequently), and it is by far the most comprehensive online timeline that I could find for the eighteenth century, I think it is a good source to use. Awadewit | talk 04:57, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
- Jack Lynch's "Eighteenth-Century Chronology" is a personal homepage. He may well be a learned professor, but this is still self-published. See
WP:SPS — I suspect the "in some circumstances" get-out-clause isn't relevant here as these are historical events that could be alternatively sourced.
- I found the the "Romantic Chronology" source website to be rather flaky (it is built on some rather old technology). There does appear to be some editorial control, though it also appears that "developers" can edit pages directly. The pages don't cite their sources. It strikes me as more of a project than a product if you get what I mean. I'd be happier with a book from a good publisher but... Do you think literary students would get away with using such sources? Are these sites respected or just seen as starting-points for research?
- Actually, for a humanities endeavor, this is a very impressive project. The two general editors are at the forefront of Romantic scholarship (one of the editors also edited a prominent anthology used to teach Romanticism, for example - Wu) and the scholars on the review board are some of the best in the field. I found this to be the best source available for the timeline - in print or on the web. Timelines like this are not really published anymore. I think that students could definitely cite this timeline. I might also mention that few timelines cite their sources. Awadewit | talk 04:57, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
- I found the the "Romantic Chronology" source website to be rather flaky (it is built on some rather old technology). There does appear to be some editorial control, though it also appears that "developers" can edit pages directly. The pages don't cite their sources. It strikes me as more of a project than a product if you get what I mean. I'd be happier with a book from a good publisher but... Do you think literary students would get away with using such sources? Are these sites respected or just seen as starting-points for research?
- Why was "A Chronology of Jane Austen and her Family: 1700-2000" not used as a source? Is it because that author's chapter in "The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen." was a condensed version that was adequate for the purposes here? Did you not consult it at all?
- I haven't studied the body in detail, though others are more capable of identifying issues wrt Jane Austin than me! I noticed your talk page discussion about what to include wrt historical context. Don't let the views of one stubborn reviewer mould your article into a form you dislike. Consensus of wikipedians is what we are after, not acceptance by one or two "important" reviewers. If you can include a number of literary/historical expert wikipedians in that discussion, and come to a consensus prior to FLC, then you can point to it as an already-resolved issue. Colin° Talk 13:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC)