The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by User:Scorpion0422 02:05, 24 December 2008 [1].

Royal Medal[edit]

To continue my reign of odd and seemingly unrelated Featured Lists I bring you...Radio 4! In all seriousness, no; I've been working on this page for (what seems like) forever and now feel it is ready for review. Any takers? Ironholds (talk) 00:00, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Sources looks good, checked with the Checklinks tool. Cannibaloki 00:20, 7 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is one of the best Wiki lists I've ever seen. Kudos! Ecoleetage (talk) 23:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Some of the capitalisation in the most right hand column is off ("in"/"In" at the start, etc.). Also, would it be worthwhile adding a short sentence to the lead about nationality of recipients (country with most medalists, total number of countries, total number of medalists etc.), given it is a multinational award? Otherwise/regardless, strong support. Daniel (talk) 01:04, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Done the capitalisation; with your permission I'm going to put a hold on the nationalities and so on; I've done it for the Sylvester Medal but have you seen how many people there are for this'n? Ironholds (talk) 06:34, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support, all issues resolved. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:02, 15 December 2008 (UTC) [reply]

Resolved issues, Dabomb87 (talk)

Comments from Dabomb87 (talk · contribs)

"so that Mathematics was a subject for " Why is "Mathematics" capitalized?
"The conditions were changed ~~yet~~ again in 1850 so that:"
"In 1965 the system was changed to its current format, with three Medals awarded annually by the Monarch on the recommendation of the Royal Society Council." With tends to be a clumsy connector, try "In 1965, the system was changed to its current format, in which three Medals are awarded annually by the Monarch on the recommendation of the Royal Society Council."
"In 1965 the system was changed to its current format, with three Medals awarded annually by the Monarch on the recommendation of the Royal Society Council."
"A and B-side Award Committees." Use a hanging hyphen here: "A- and B-side Award Committees."
Images need checking (ask User:David Fuchs); as an example, File:George IV van het Verenigd Koninkrijk.jpg needs a source, and File:FrancisHarryComptonCrick.jpg needs a better fair use rationale. Also, image captions that are not complete sentences should not have full stops at the end.
Sources The sources need publishers. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:43, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
All done except the images. I'll assume your image comments here link in with those on the Sylvester Medal review and send that over to Mr Fuchs as well. Ironholds (talk) 18:33, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Right, all done. I've removed the images (minus one properly tagged one in the intro para) since I cannot guarantee the rest are fair/free use. Ironholds (talk) 22:52, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note please fix the dab links. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:12, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Ironholds (talk) 00:29, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: Lists should be in chronological order, per WP:SAL/WP:LIST. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 08:44, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Uhh.. it is chronological. Ironholds (talk) 15:08, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I should have clarified more. From SAL, "Chronological lists, including all timelines and lists of works, should be in earliest-to-latest chronological order." Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 16:37, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

So I have to reverse them? Sod. I'll get right on it. It doesn't seem to matter when you have a sortcode in anyway, but wthn. Ironholds (talk) 16:42, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think so, unfortunately. If the tables were sortable it would matter less, except that for people using printed versions of the page it would still be wrong. Even then, the default sort would still have to be earliest-to-latest :( Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 18:14, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay I've reversed them. Gary King (talk) 20:00, 16 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a requirement for FL, but are there any WikiProjects the page falls under the scope of? Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 06:31, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As with the Sylvester Medal, Wikipedia:WikiProject Science comes to mind. With this we'd have to be quite general since it is awarded for a shedload of different subjects. Wikipedia:WikiProject Orders, Decorations, and Medals would be another one. Ironholds (talk) 09:16, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

According to WikiProject Orders, Decorations, and Medals's scope they only cover national decorations etc. I have proposed a WikiProject to cover such articles and lists as this. (anyone for canvassing?) Rambo's Revenge (talk) 21:25, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indeedy, and I'd like to get involved in that project if I may. Ironholds (talk) 03:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from The Rambling Man on tour (talk · contribs) (late, as usual)

Not sure on the title of the list. Is it Royal Medal or Royal Medals as stated in the lead? I'm sure it can be either but it's a little confusing right now. It's really a "List of Royal Medal recipients"...
Some quotation marks missing from...
- "...contained in the Ores of Platina.
- "...and chlorides," published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1836.
- "...Transactions for 1838 and 1839.
- "...he has rendered to taxonomic botany.
- "...thyroxine, and in immunological chemistry.
- "...heavy water reactors for power generation.
- "...DNA and his continuing contribution to molecular biology.
Rationale which states ""For his paper on diamagnetism and magne-crystallic action, published in the Philosophical Magazine in 1851. (the award of this medal was declined by Dr Tyndall)" - I'd guess the rationale didn't include the declination of acceptance? Make it a footnote.
Yay, rambling man is back! Actually the "the award of the medal was declined.." bit was included in the Royal Society medal archives under the rationale. Ironholds (talk) 08:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are quite a few jargony words in the rationales - is it worth considering linking any of them? It could be opening a can of worms though...
Not sure; with all the jargony words, journals and so on it might end up looking underwater. I'd suggest "no"; after all, we do have a search box. Ironholds (talk) 08:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
~~George Paget Thomson's name is repeated in his rationale.~~ done. Ironholds (talk) 08:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
~~Experimental Psychology doesn't need to have the captial P does it?~~ done. Ironholds (talk) 08:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
~~Same with Nuclear physics? and Computer science...?~~ done. Poke me with any more that turn up. Ironholds (talk) 08:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Odd choice of when to link - Chemistry gets linked in 2008 but not beforehand? I guess when the list got reversed the linking didn't?
Yar, Will work on it now.

*Elliot Smith has no rationale and no note telling me why - it's a shade confusing, like you forgot to add it or something.

Elliot Smith had no rationale given (that is, the royal society don't know what it is). I'll stick in a little note in italics saying "no rationale given". Ironholds (talk) 08:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Done.

*Yates, Statistical (B)biology - rogue space before the In - " In recognition..."

1992 to 1994 rationales seem to have different initial capitalisations from all other rationales... any reason?
No idea, that is just how they appear on the RS archives. Ironholds (talk) 08:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise a superb effort. The Rambling Man on tour (talk) 05:22, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alrighty, changed the initial tense. Since we don't have an article on the Royal Medal itself this is really the Royal Medal article and recipent list. I've corrected the quotation mark issue and the problem with the Chemistry et al bluelinks; any other issues? It has all got kinda muddled with the number of bullet points around. Ironholds (talk) 15:01, 18 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Carcharoth

Background
Background Goodness! :-) I've been working on Royal Medal as well for what seems like ages, but Ironholds did in about two weeks more than I did in nearly two years - and I'm most grateful for that! (I would have turned up here earlier, but I've been busy the past two weeks). I'm also grateful to Ironholds for pointing out the copyvio that he mentioned on the talk page - I should have spotted that, but was coming at the list from a different angle altogether. The following is a little background to the approach I took here. Initial work - see Talk:Royal Medal. When I first came to the article in February 2007 it was incomplete and looked like this (except most of the links were red). It's difficult to emphasise enough just how many of those links were red (i.e. a lot of the articles hadn't been written yet). A lot of them were missing as well, so I expanded the list to ensure it was complete. Then I set about checking all the redlinks to see if the articles did exist, and creating redirects or correcting spellings (the front sections of the Royal Society website had quite a few spelling mistakes when compared to the spelling used in their archive/source pages - two examples are Brown/Broun and Maclean/Maclear). This turned a lot of the redlinks blue, but many redlinks still remained. That's what led to the list of redlinks on the talk page (around 71 redlinks from about 400 links in total). Waiting for redlinks to turn blue - over the next year or so, I kept checking back to the talk page, and gradually the redlinks began to turn blue. In each case, I tracked down the date when the article was created and made a note of it. Eventually, I began to create some of the articles myself, and eventually "36 of about 71 had been created or found by October 2008, after about 20 months". That still left roughly 35 articles that were redlinks. Creating the remaining articles - as far as I can tell, Ironholds has created the remaining 34 articles - around 10 as reasonably complete articles ranging from start-class and above, but quite a few of the articles (around 23) have only been created as single one-line articles. My view is that it is better to leave such articles as redlinks, rather than create them as one-liners. Certainly, creating one-line articles to turn redlinks blue to make a list look complete shouldn't (in my view) be done (examples: 1, 2, 3 and so on 23 times), as it is nearly always better to get an article off to a good start, rather than create a one-liner. In any case, a lot of tidying up is needed, including: (a) the creation of some redirects (I've done a few just now) (b) tidying and expansion of the articles (will try and help with that) (c) checking the articles are correct Copying and pasting the one-liners can lead to mistakes like this and this. In both cases, the wrong name was used due to copying and pasting from the previous article in a run of robotic article creation. Those articles will need to be double-checked for other possible mistakes. Creating the redirects - for the background to this, see here. Many of the redirects, when created, don't turn any existing redlinks blue, but in the case of Keith Usherwood Ingold (linked from Royal Medal and Davy Medal), there is also Keith U. Ingold (linked from Henry Marshall Tory Medal) and Keith Ingold (linked from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Isaak-Walton-Killam Award). I've created those two redirects (I had tried to earlier, but they kept getting deleted by deletion scripts), and those awards could be mentioned in the article as well. This is laborious work, but when you do find redirects that you can create and that are turning redlinks elsewhere blue (use 'what links here' to find them) it is rather rewarding work. Different types of work - before I move on to review the list, can I ask what level of recognition is given to the different types of work done on such articles? This is not a personal thing (I'm just pleased that the article has got better much quicker than it would have done with only me editing it!), but a general query about whether most of the credit goes to whoever does the final stage bringing a list up to featured status, and whether earlier work is credited or not? My view is the different sorts of work are all vital in their own way, and it would be nice to recognise that somehow, but how I have no idea.

Background

- Background
  - Goodness! :-) I've been working on Royal Medal as well for what seems like ages, but Ironholds did in about two weeks more than I did in nearly two years - and I'm most grateful for that! (I would have turned up here earlier, but I've been busy the past two weeks). I'm also grateful to Ironholds for pointing out the copyvio that he mentioned on the talk page - I should have spotted that, but was coming at the list from a different angle altogether. The following is a little background to the approach I took here.
  - Initial work - see Talk:Royal Medal. When I first came to the article in February 2007 it was incomplete and looked like this (except most of the links were red). It's difficult to emphasise enough just how many of those links were red (i.e. a lot of the articles hadn't been written yet). A lot of them were missing as well, so I expanded the list to ensure it was complete. Then I set about checking all the redlinks to see if the articles did exist, and creating redirects or correcting spellings (the front sections of the Royal Society website had quite a few spelling mistakes when compared to the spelling used in their archive/source pages - two examples are Brown/Broun and Maclean/Maclear). This turned a lot of the redlinks blue, but many redlinks still remained. That's what led to the list of redlinks on the talk page (around 71 redlinks from about 400 links in total).
  - Waiting for redlinks to turn blue - over the next year or so, I kept checking back to the talk page, and gradually the redlinks began to turn blue. In each case, I tracked down the date when the article was created and made a note of it. Eventually, I began to create some of the articles myself, and eventually "36 of about 71 had been created or found by October 2008, after about 20 months". That still left roughly 35 articles that were redlinks.
  - Creating the remaining articles - as far as I can tell, Ironholds has created the remaining 34 articles - around 10 as reasonably complete articles ranging from start-class and above, but quite a few of the articles (around 23) have only been created as single one-line articles. My view is that it is better to leave such articles as redlinks, rather than create them as one-liners. Certainly, creating one-line articles to turn redlinks blue to make a list look complete shouldn't (in my view) be done (examples: 1, 2, 3 and so on 23 times), as it is nearly always better to get an article off to a good start, rather than create a one-liner. In any case, a lot of tidying up is needed, including:
    - (a) the creation of some redirects (I've done a few just now)
    - (b) tidying and expansion of the articles (will try and help with that)
    - (c) checking the articles are correct
      - Copying and pasting the one-liners can lead to mistakes like this and this. In both cases, the wrong name was used due to copying and pasting from the previous article in a run of robotic article creation. Those articles will need to be double-checked for other possible mistakes.
  - Creating the redirects - for the background to this, see here. Many of the redirects, when created, don't turn any existing redlinks blue, but in the case of Keith Usherwood Ingold (linked from Royal Medal and Davy Medal), there is also Keith U. Ingold (linked from Henry Marshall Tory Medal) and Keith Ingold (linked from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Isaak-Walton-Killam Award). I've created those two redirects (I had tried to earlier, but they kept getting deleted by deletion scripts), and those awards could be mentioned in the article as well. This is laborious work, but when you do find redirects that you can create and that are turning redlinks elsewhere blue (use 'what links here' to find them) it is rather rewarding work.
  - Different types of work - before I move on to review the list, can I ask what level of recognition is given to the different types of work done on such articles? This is not a personal thing (I'm just pleased that the article has got better much quicker than it would have done with only me editing it!), but a general query about whether most of the credit goes to whoever does the final stage bringing a list up to featured status, and whether earlier work is credited or not? My view is the different sorts of work are all vital in their own way, and it would be nice to recognise that somehow, but how I have no idea.

- Review of the list
  - Duplication of Royal Society webpages - the four main sources used for this list are the Royal Society webpages on the Royal Medal winners (split into four over the time period). This is used to source the name, the year and the rationale. Although we are quoting the rationale and making clear what the source is, our list does seem to duplicate the Royal Society website to a large extent. Is that OK in terms of copyright or not?
    I believe it is fine; it is a list of individuals, after all. If it was prose, which can be tied to down to a particular style of writing and therefore be considered identifiable work of one (or more) individuals then it is another story, but a chronological list is a chronological list. Ironholds (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The list of who won the awards, yes, I have no problems with that. The list of the rationales, I'm not so sure about. What would be really nice is to know where the announcements of the awards are or were officially published. Nowadays, it might be that they just use press releases and the website, but back in the day (before the internet!) I think the announcement was usually made in one of the Royal Society's journals, or some form of gazette/newsletter (often forming part of the journal) that recorded "society matters". That would feel more informative than just (to be brutally honest here) recycling and repackaging what the Royal Society have put on their website. Don't get me wrong here, I think it is a great list, it is just that our list doesn't do much more than the Royal Society's list. I had the same qualms about the nominations of the lists of Nobel Prize winners (those were nominated by someone else). This "duplicating of lists done on official websites without adding much extra to them" issue isn't really a matter for this nomination, though, but for WT:FL, so I will try and raise it there at some point. Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Do we need to quote the exact names from the sources? The names used in our list are not always the same spelling or format as the ones used in the Royal Society list. I think the exact form as given on the website should be used, with piped or redirected links as needed. Examples of spelling mistakes are John Allan Broun (1878) - spelt John Allan Brown on the Royal Society website; and Thomas Maclear (1869) - spelt Thomas Maclean on the Royal Society website. In both those cases, the Royal Society website appears to be wrong, but some sort of footnote acknowledging this would be good. Examples of names in a form different to that used on the Royal Society website are: "EH Mansfield" (Royal Society) versus "Eric Mansfield" (Wikipedia) and "RJP Williams" (Royal Society) versus "Robert J Williams" (Wikipedia). It might seem pedantic, but when common names like "Williams" are involved, it is critical to make sure you have got the right person. The best place to verify the dead ones is in the Royal Society records of Fellows (see here), as many of the recipients are Fellows of the Royal Society. For living Fellows, see here. From there, RJP Williams becomes "Robert Joseph Paton Williams". What we put in this list, I don't know. What is best?
    Wikipedia isn't a fan of including middle names in article titles, I know that from my peerage work; I'm not sure to what extent that applies here (i.e if it is only a concern when titles are involved, although I can't see that being the case). Rambling Man, any points? Ironholds (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    This is not about article titles (that is something to be sorted on an article-by-article basis), but about whether lists like this should: (a) Use the exact form of the name used in the source used for the list; or (b) modify and extend the name for consistent presentation within our list. I favour the former when a source is consistent, and the latter when (as here) the source is inconsistent (using initials in one part of the list and full names in another). When we standardise the name format used in the source, we should then be consistent throughout our list. I think at least middle initials should be used. While doing such work, the scientist articles can be brought up-to-date with full names if not already present. This is not a major objection, though, and is something I'm happy to work on after the nomination is over. Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Number of years and recipients - is it possible for the lead to explicitly say how many years the award has been running for (182 years, I think) and to compare this to the age of other awards and to also state how many people have received the award over the years (over 400, I think)? I realise the numbers will date (or need updating), but if you say for what year you are calculating this, that will make it clearer and will give people more of an idea of how old the award is and the huge number of people on the list.
    Good idea; done. My calculator says it has been awarded 270 times, but if I've done it wrong feel free to slap me with a trout and correct it. Ironholds (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Not sure where 270 comes from. :-) My calculations indicate that from 1826 to 2008 inclusive (183 years), the awards as a whole (i.e. each set of awards for a year, whether one, two or three awards, counting once) have been awarded 181 times (i.e. there were two years when the awards were not made - 1831 and 1832). The total number of medals awarded (i.e. including people who have received more than one Royal Medal) between 1826 and 2008 is 405. There are also 39 cases where people with the same surname received a Royal Medal. Once I've tracked those down (some are different people with the same surname) I'll list them here or on the talk page. That will also give a figure for the number of people awarded the Royal Medal. If this is all too trivial, please feel free to leave it out or relegate to a footnote. I think the number of years (i.e. age of the award) and the number of medals awarded, and the people who have won it more than once, are notable. The copyvio text you removed (it was from the Royal Society website) mentioned that several Nobel Prize winners have recieved the award. Whether you want to mention that or not, I don't know. Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Nobel Prize winners I originally removed (because there are quite a few of them) but that is definitely something to be looked at. Ironholds (talk) 10:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Different layout - previously, the list was laid out with all three (or two, pre-1965) winners on the same line for each year, rather than below each other on the list as now. See here for the previous format (a three column table). I was wondering if it was possible to use that format and put the rationales below each winner? Or would that be too difficult to do? If the list was split (see point raised elsewhere) it may be easier to adopt such a layout.
    Might be awkward, really; you'd need to either 1) make the "name" rows far, far longer than the names require or 2) not do so and have a rationale 3 inches wide and 12 down. Ironholds (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree. Forget this one, it was just a thought. Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Medal types need to be mentioned - this is rather a critical point about the list. It is a vital piece of information that is missing, one that I think should be there (and that I was thinking of adding at some point). Namely the distinction between first, second and third medal awarded each year. For the 1850 to 1965 awards, saying whether the award was for the physical sciences, or the biological sciences, is important. Ditto for the post-1965 period when three awards were made - I believe a distinction is made there as well, though I need to find sources for that.
    Exactly my problem; I can't find any source to say what was awarded for what. Obviously if someone is awarded a medal for their electrical engineering work you can say it is most likely for the third medal, but doing that for the whole list with no reputable source verges on WP:OR. I emailed the Royal Society asking if there was any way for me to find out; unfortunately it is partially government funded (so slow, and no response) :P. Ironholds (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Leave for now, then. If I find sources, I'll let you know or I'll start work on an updated version of the list. Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Dividing the list into sections - since this is a very long list, and it divides naturally into three parts (due to changes in the way the medal was awarded and how many were awarded), would it be an idea to divide the list up into three sections? (a) Pre-1850 (initial awards to two people, but no specific conditions); (b) 1850 to 1965 (the "two great divisions of Natural Knowledge" conditions applied, but still only two awards); and (c) post-1965 (three winners per year, but 'A' and 'B' side elements still there). Would that work?
    It could, but it would mess up the sorting. At the moment we have a sortcode in the table so that you can shift it around in ascending/descending order for when it was awarded, who it was awarded to and so on. Dividing it up unfortunately wrecks that (I encountered a similar problem with one of my previous ones, List of Stewards of the Manor of Northstead). Ironholds (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not convinced that merely having the table sortable (it doesn't look sortable to me - I might need to tweak my browser) should over-ride concerns that there are distinct sections for this list. Certainly the "two people" and "three people" split should be considered, as that was a major change in the award. For an alphabetical listing of the winners, the category provides that, and I would tend to use the search in text feature of the browser to find an individual anyway. The default sorting (by year) is all that is needed, I think. Can't think of any other reason why sorting would be needed on a table like this. The "field" column is problematic in my view anyway, so being able to sort on that isn't necessary as far as I'm concerned. I did ask someone (a few months ago) about bringing this list to featured status, and one of the recommendations was to split the list in the way I'm describing, so if we could discuss this a little more, would that be possible? Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    - Indeed; mebbe move this bit of the FL discussion to the candidate talk page? Ironholds (talk) 10:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Linking terms from the rationales - I know this has been mentioned before, but I'm raising it again because I think that careful and judicious linking can improve the article. Also, a "related articles" or "see also" column would, I think, help with the addition of such links. I'm aware that people can click through to the article on the scientist, and go on from there, but some people will want to browse onwards from the rationale column, and I think we should provide suitable links for those readers (especially where the scientist article is only a stub). Some examples of terms that could be uncontroversially linked: Principles of Geology; "Brome" (could be piped to bromine, or explained in the adjoining column or a footnote; ditto for "Platina" and platinum; Malpighian bodies (and Bowman's capsule); if a source could confirm it, Wheatstone bridge would be a good addition to the Wheatstone entry; "the Antarctic expedition of Sir James Ross" - we don't have an article yet, but we almost certainly will at some point; Meridian arc; HMS Challenger; and so on. I know Ironholds said that's what we have a search function for, but I disagree. We should provide selected links for the readers - not linking everything, but enough to guide them towards some good and informative articles.
    Consensus (on this page) says link; done. Awaiting sources for the remaining points. Ironholds (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd like to add a few more links. Would that be OK? Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    No ownership here mate; you don't need to ask permission (also with the work you've done on this thing if there was ownership it would most likely belong to you. Ironholds (talk) 10:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - "Field" column - I'm not clear where this is sourced from. Some of the early scientists here were multidisciplinary or the sciences in question were still evolving. Is this column a bit too much "our work" rather than referenced to a source? Similar issues, though not quite so bad, apply to a nationality column (which someone mentioned).
    No response here? Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, must have missed it. Nationality is something I've discounted from this for the moment (sheer size of the list makes implementing it a bugger) and not really useful unlles like the Sylvester Medal list somebody includes a "the award has been given to X number of people from this country, X from that" and so on. The field column I based on two things; 1) what their specialties were and 2) what the rationale for the award was. With single disciplinary people it was easy, with multidisciplinary it went "what field of theirs does the rationale fit in best with?" so for a winner who worked in chemistry, physics and mathematics an award for, say, discovering bromine would be classified as "chemistry". In that respect it is more "field of the winning work" than "field of the winner". I admit it may cross over into WP:OR; not sure why I didn't think of it earlier, really. Ironholds (talk) 10:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Backlinks - not really related to this list, but one of the things I noted on the talk page was a need to have the award mentioned in all the articles of the people who received the award (i.e. backlinks). There are over 400 articles to check (which is why I never finished), but there are still articles out there that don't link back here. In order to increased the number of people arriving at this list, it would be good to spend some time ensuring all these backlinks are there (as with everything else, I'm very happy to help out with this - I realise how time-consuming it is to work on massive lists like this as I spent hours checking hundreds of redlinks to see if suitable redirects could be created).
    That is something to be done in a bit and not really related to the worth of the list itself (although I do see your point, and will get on to it). I spent a few sessions putting everyone in Category:Royal Medal winners, but it isn't really the same. Ironholds (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Brilliant. Do let me know if you need a hand - we could work from opposite ends of the list and meet in the middle. This point wasn't relevant to this discussion at all, but I wanted to bring it up. It's part of my view that merely having an article or list not being orphaned is not enough, or linked from "a lot of articles", but that an important part of our best articles is that they have people who have consciously tried to link back to this article from the most relevant articles elsewhere - a kind of review of "what links here" for the article. I might raise that at WT:FAC and WT:FL at some point. I don't think it would ever become a criteria though! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Done it, actually, took me a sodding long time. Something to be included in your FL/FA comments. It should be included; FA's and Fl's are meant to be Wikipedia's best lists and articles. This doesn't (or shouldn't) just involve the article itself being good, but more the area being good. Taking the Royal Medal as an example, say (and this ties into your "don't create one-line articles" point); what are lists used for? I'm guessing most readers of this list would use it for looking at information on the medal proper and then for further information on a winner. What does it say when the winners article doesn't even include the fact that he won the damn thing? Ironholds (talk) 11:45, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Citations to original journals - some interesting tidbits of information about each award can be gleaned from rummaging through the journals in which the awards were announced or the award dinners/ceremonies reported on. Many of these (such as the Royal Society Transactions journal) are behind paywalls, but it is something that could be used in future to expand/add to the "article" parts of the list.
    As you say, future. Referencing the Northstead article again; I added in interesting tidbits about particularly odd situations; it got shot down at the Featured List review. Ironholds (talk) 03:39, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Pity. Other points I wanted to raise were the absence of an award in 1831 and 1832 (any reason for this?) and why there was only one award made in 1837. The fact that the conditions changed in 1837 indicates some upheaval, which might explain why there was only one award made. e.g. some big controversy over whether maths should be included, drama ensues, only one award is made that year, and conditions changed for future years. Pure speculation, but if a source can be found for this and other points, I'd certainly add them. As this list is at an "article title", I don't think expanding the "article" part of the page should be forbidden merely because it breaches ideas of what a list should be (ditto for the Thomas Snow Beck controversy I pointed out below). Consider this: if I had added this and other things to the article (with sources) before you worked on it and brought it to FLC, would you have removed them? This is definitely a point I'd like to discuss further. I'll raise it at WT:FL if no-one responds to it here. Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    I wouldn't personally; it may have been down to how I structured it last time. After this is over maybe we/you should write up some suggestions for changes to the criteria and whatnot. Ironholds (talk) 10:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Other history - one final thing, which applies more to the "article" aspect rather than the list aspect, is the Thomas Snow Beck controversy. Read Thomas Snow Beck and the source given there to see what I mean. That sort of story would add a little something to the list, I think. There are undoubtedly other stories in the 180-years-plus history of the award, and possibly (if you look hard enough) some secondary sources or articles giving an overview of the history of the award.
    Responses to this are covered by the preceding points. Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Right, that's enough. Sorry to go on at such length, but this is one of the articles I've followed for a very long time, though never quite finding the time to do everything with it that I wanted to. Many thanks again to Ironholds for yanking the list up a level or two (or three!). I'm not sure how many of my comments are actionable or desirable, but I'd be interested to hear what people think. Carcharoth (talk) 00:24, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - I've responded to Ironholds above, inline. If some of the points I've raised aren't part of the criteria for featured lists, I'd be happy to mark them as such and move them to the talk page of the list for further discussion. I'll wait a bit to see what others think (possibly I arrived a bit late to this discussion, so I'm not sure how many other people have seen the comments yet). Carcharoth (talk) 09:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Responded again. Ironholds (talk) 10:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support - some issues to be sorted (see above) but nothing that would prevent me supporting this nomination. (Full disclosure: I did some of the early work on this article - my review and support here is of the later work done by Ironholds, as opposed to the work I did on the article and talk page and indirectly elsewhere on redirects and filling in redlinks). Carcharoth (talk) 11:35, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sources and images look good. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:01, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support - good stuff, and credit to you, Ironholds, for the work you put in post-nomination. All the best, The Rambling Man on tour (talk) 05:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.