Charles Merlin has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. Review: December 6, 2023. (Reviewed version).

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A fact from Charles Merlin appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 December 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that the banker Charles Merlin played a major role in the trafficking of antiquities between Greece and London in the 19th century? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2023/December. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Charles Merlin.

This review is transcluded from Talk:Charles Merlin/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Zawed (talk · contribs) 06:35, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I will take a look at this one, comments to follow in due course. Zawed (talk) 06:35, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for picking it up - looking forward to your comments. 21:45, 2 December 2023 (UTC) UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 21:45, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Lead

• Normally no need for cites in the lede, so I assume it is for the quote?
  • Yup; one of the few exceptions under MOS:LEADCITE. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Early life

• A couple of very short sentences start off this section, and then adjacent sentences end/start François-Nicolas Merlin. Can I suggest a modification: ...Augusta and François-Nicolas Merlin, the latter a...
  • Agreed on the problem; I've done something slightly different to fix it. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• The Merlin family emigrated to London...: I think in this context it is immigrated (they emigrated from France; they immigrated to England). Also doesn't one immigrate to a country rather than a city? Perhaps say "Merlin family moved to London"?
  • I've seen that used, but Cambridge is perfectly happy to give "People emigrated to districts with more economic opportunity" as an example of correct usage. I think emigrate is preferable to immigrate here, as the emphasis is on the fact that he left (the "push factors"). UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Merlin family may have emigrated to England... as above, I think in this context it is immigrated
  • See above. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Shouldn't cites 3 and 4 be expressed as explanatory notes? Then they dould be consolidated with cite 1
  • I don't think so; the additional text is purely showing the sources' workings as to how they support the material given, rather than (as an EFN) explaining or expanding upon the information in the text. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Career

• Is there anything in the sources as to how he got the job as "clerk and administrator", particularly given his youth (15 years)? When I did my source checks, I noted cite 8 gives the year he got the role as 1839 rather than the 1836 given here.
  • It is 1839 (at 18); changed. Galanakis does explain it a little, so added that too. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Merlin spent most of his life in Athens:[6] The historians: The colon should be either a fullstop or semi-colon, and if the latter, then it should be "the" not "The"
  • Colon is intentional (the second sentence explains the first, so it's a colon rather than a semicolon), so changed to lower-case. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• and in 1868 was promoted to be Britain's consul in Piraeus,: should consul be capitalised like Vice-Consul is? Also cite 8 gives the year as 1865?
  • A tricky one with MOS:JOBTITLES: as it's a description here rather than a specific title (compare "the board's president" with "President of the Board of Trade"), should be lc. Willockx gives 1865 for the bank promotion and 1868 for the consulate; as her article is in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal and is cited; Galanakis also gives 1868 for the consulate. The BM biography isn't peer-reviewed and is cited to Galanakis, so I think the author simply conflated the two appointments. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• acting capacity during 1859 and 1864.: is this two distinct periods of time or the period from 1859 to 1864?
  • Two distinct periods. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Antiquities trading

• who was appointed as the museum's Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities in 1861.: need to specify British Museum here
  • Done. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• selected the aryballos for purchase: aryballos is italicised here but not on first mention
  • Deitalicised. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• specimens to the museum:[8] and National Bank of Athens in 1877: I think the colons here should be semi-colons
  • Agreed on the second, but not the first, as there the second sentence is explanatory. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Personal life

• Augustus Merlin became the British vice-consul: title case for vice-consul for consistency with earlier presentation? (and consul later on in the sentence)
  • The "the" is the important different here ("Louis was the king of France" but "King Louis of France attended the ball") under MOS:JOBTITLES. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

• These look to be RS in general; however, it should be clear in the bibliography that Judson is a thesis, giving the publisher as Cambridge University Press is not correct. I note the year is given as 2020 but at the link is 2017. Perhaps you meant to link to a journal article that came out of the PhD, not the thesis?
  • I'm citing the book, which isn't a thesis and did come out in 2020. I think Citation Bot "helpfully" added the links to the free text of the thesis by the same name. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:38, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• In the bibliography, it is unclear which of the 2012 Galanakis refs are the ones designated a, b and c
  • There's no way around this without suppressing the full dates, unfortunately; mousing over the links to e.g. Galanakis 2012b brings up the full title, which means that any reader can immediately go from a citation to the precise source - that's all that is really required. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:38, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Presumably the Galanakis refs should be chronological order, so the 31 Oct should precede the 30 Nov
  • I've gone by year, then by title. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Why is cite 13 expressed as a collective group of sources, shouldn't they be individual?
  • This is known as bundling and is useful when multiple sources tell slightly different parts of the same story (for instance, once gives the basic outline of an event, another gives its date, and a third gives its location). UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Source spot checks

• I focussed mostly on the Galanakis refs, and for the facts I checked, they were supported by the source
• Cite 8 (British Museum) - doesn't explicitly state he was vice-consul for 'Greece', it just says 'there'. As we are dealing with a consulate, it seems to me it is more likely that he was vice-consul for Piraeus consulate. This interpretation is supported by the mention later in Career section of: Britain's consul in Piraeus as well as a skim of Galanakis (30 Nov 2012). FWIW, Cite 8 does't seem to add anything that isn't in Galanakis (30 Nov 2012) so perhaps consider deleting?
  • Changed to fit. The BM bio does potentially widen what Galanakis says about naturalistic specimens; G. specifies birds, but the BM itself says "zoological specimens"; it's possible that there were more specimens that the BM/NHM know about but Galanakis didn't mention. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
• Cite 17 (Judson): no mention of "Objects of this kind", i.e. Aegean seal-stones, on page 5 (see comment above)
  • It's on p5 of the book (see reply above): One of Evans’ main goals in excavating at Knossos was in fact to look for further evidence of pre-alphabetic writing. He had already identified the symbols carved on prehistoric Cretan seal-stones as signs of a writing system ... later, Evans would distinguish between two different, though clearly related, linear writing systems, which he designated Linear A and Linear B.

Other stuff

• No dupe links
• Image tags checkout
• Copyvio - I ran this through Earwig and it flagged a lot of similarity (44%) to Galanakis (30 Nov 2012). However, drilling into it, the majority of this is due to usage of names, titles and institutions (e.g. Archaeological Society of Athens, British Museum, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities), as well as cited quotes. A couple of phrases that did concern me were "he served as the Ionian Bank's general manager" and "was invited to join the bank's Court of Directors", so I would like to see these be expressed differently.
  • Not a whole lot of freedom of movement in those, but I've done my best. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's my comments for now. Cheers, Zawed (talk) 10:00, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• • Thanks for these: appreciate your time and your sharp eye. Should all be replied above. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 10:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Happy with the above responses and changes to the article. Passing as GA as I believe that the article meets the necessary criteria. Cheers, Zawed (talk) 08:55, 6 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]