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

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 23:54, 3 April 2011 [1].

Queen Victoria[edit]

Queen Victoria (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): DrKiernan (talk) 12:32, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Victoria of the United Kingdom/archive1
Wikipedia:Featured article review/Victoria of the United Kingdom/archive1

This is a former featured article that was demoted, now re-written. DrKiernan (talk) 12:32, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WP:FFA, has been on mainpage. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:15, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Comments by Johnbod

Resolved commentary moved to talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:26, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I wouldn't call some resolved at all, but I'm supporting despite them. Johnbod (talk) 21:51, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please move back to here anything that you consider important enough for me to hold up promotion over. Sorry if I goofed! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:04, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, that's ok thanks. They are done with anyway. Johnbod (talk) 03:53, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

Thank you for such a careful analysis. Unsourced material removed; citations amended.[2] DrKiernan (talk) 21:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Lecen Why there are so many sentences without sources? --Lecen (talk) 23:54, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Because with 212 inline references I would prefer to have one reference at the end of a paragraph or section if the material is all from the same source rather than duplicate references, or not provide one for uncontentious facts (like the date of her birth or the outcome of a general election). DrKiernan (talk) 00:11, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from GoodDay The article isn't ready for FA. Its title should be moved back to Victoria of the United Kingdom. Queen, is not her first name, see King Clancy, Queen Latifah. -- GoodDay (talk) 00:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Based on what? You should know that there was a long dicussion and voting in favor of the present name. After all, you voted there. This is certainly not the place to argue about this. --Lecen (talk) 01:12, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The title is wrong. Therefore I don't endorse this article's FA candidacy. GoodDay (talk) 01:20, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You are wrong. The nominator has no power to force the other editors who supported the present title to change their opinions. Again: this is not the place to discuss this. --Lecen (talk) 01:40, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose the FA candidacy for this article. The nominator is free to ignore my objections. GoodDay (talk) 01:44, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Your opposition would be more worthwhile if it made reference to the featured article criteria. Just sayin'. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:55, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not used to these FA candidacy things. I've withdrawn my oppostion here, but haven't changed my mind on the article title. GoodDay (talk) 02:02, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Tim riley An enjoyable article. A few points about the prose:

22:03, 23 March 2011 (UTC) (Sorry - forgot to add my tildes.) Tim riley (talk) 22:07, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the review; changes made[3]. Capitalization should follow WP:Job titles, but I don't find the guideline particularly clear. DrKiernan (talk) 22:40, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I am conscious that experts in the subject are commenting on this page, but as a layman I am happy to support the article's elevation to FA. It is well shaped and well balanced; the prose suffices; the referencing is formidable; and the images are first class. I think the nominator has done remarkably well to boil the huge amount of information about Her late Majesty down to a digestible article. It would be all too easy to ramble, but this article doesn't. I can see no FA criterion that it fails to satisfy. Tim riley (talk) 14:47, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Wehwalt
Resolved comments moved to talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Support Excellent job, the good doctor is to be congratulated (and I'd tend to blame the lack of education as monarch on the Duchess of Kent and on Conroy, who were betting all on being able to control Victoria, and part of that was keeping her helpless.)--Wehwalt (talk) 22:32, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - just a passing comment here. Almost certainly too trivial to mention, but given that you mention the various assassination attempts, which undoubtedly made the police nervous, do your sources mention at all the case of Thomas Skaife, who invented a pistol-shaped camera (the pistolgraph) and apparently was surrounded by police when he aimed it at Queen Victoria during a procession (silly fool that he was for doing that): some sources? That story has always stuck in my mind! I also vaguely remember seeing some recent modern camera designs that you can hold and point like a gun. Seems the same mistakes keep getting made... Carcharoth (talk) 04:31, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No, I've seen nothing on that before. Bizarre. DrKiernan (talk) 09:38, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sources questions - and a few questions on the sources. Looking at the bibliography, I see six works that are published books on Victoria alone. In chronological order, these are: Queen Victoria (Strachey, 1921); Victoria R.I. (Longford, 1964); The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Marshall, 1972 work reprinted in 1992); Queen Victoria: Her Life and Times 1819–1861 (Woodham-Smith, 1972); Queen Victoria: A Portrait (St Aubyn, 1991); Queen Victoria: A Personal History (Hibbert, 2000). Some comments and questions:

A final point is that given that you take the time to say which biographies are outdated and which of the earlier ones are still admired, is there a reason you don't mention Hibbert and his biography in the article text? If Hibbert's work is now the authoritative work on Victoria, building on and improving on and expanding on, the earlier works, should the article not say this? You are also silent on the Marshall and St Aubyn works, though you do mention St Aubyn as one of her biographers. Is there a reason to mention the other biographers by name in the article but not Hibbert and Marshall? Carcharoth (talk) 05:05, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've used Hibbert for the most part because it is the most recent complete life by a notable scholar that I have access to. Walter Arnstein's Queen Victoria would be an alternative, but I don't have a copy. Longford's and Woodham-Smith's are easily the most admired; Woodham-Smith's death before the completion of her volume 2 (1861–1901) is often decried as a loss to biography.
There were biographies published during Victoria's life which are all either sycophantic or ill-informed. A book by Agnes Strickland had to be withdrawn. The Royal Archives has copies of "biographies" where Victoria has scribbled furiously in the margin "Rubbish!!" and "Not true!" and so on. I believe, the first "serious" biography was Sidney Lee's but it was published before any access to any primary documents. Lorne published a book in 1901, Victoria R.I., but I would probably call that a primary source rather than a biography. The first letters and journal entries (edited by Esher) were published in 1907 (letters) and 1912 (early journal), and so Strachey's was the first complete biography (apart from Lorne's) to have reasonable access to primary material. Personally, I would say the early part of Strachey is OK, which is understandable because it is constructed from primary sources published by Esher and Greville's memoirs, however it does contain some now obvious errors. The latter half of Strachey is now not comprehensive and rather thin in my opinion, but clearly very good for the time. The later letters and journal started to become available in the late 20s/early 30s, which I believe led to the first informed coverage of Victoria's political influence by a biographer (Frank Hardie) in 1935. Although, I'm not sure whether Ponsonby might have said something along those lines in the earlier 30s.
I do not know of any change in the way Victoria has been perceived by biographers since Longford. Longford, Woodham-Smith, Marshall, St Aubyn and Hibbert cover much the same material, which is why it is so easy to bundle references together. There is no need to say "this biographer says this, but so-and-so says otherwise" because they are agreed. The disagreements between biographies arise only when comparing the pre-primary material books with the post-primary ones, where I have obviously gone with the post-primary interpretation.
I would be quite happy to add some of the above into the article, and indeed probably am going to do just that in a while for the bits above that aren't my opinion, but to be quite honest there are so many books and so much material, something has to be left out. DrKiernan (talk) 09:38, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank-you for such a detailed response. I agree that some things have to be left out, but it is reassuring to know that the history of the sources (even those not used) is known in such detail. I'll be interested to see how and whether it can be worked into the article. The bit about the pre-Strachey biographies and Queen Victoria's scribbling on some of the ones published in her lifetime was particularly amusing. One important point - do you think Walter Arnstein's Queen Victoria should be mentioned in some 'further reading' section for balance? Carcharoth (talk) 03:37, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd rather not have an extra section. Ideally, we should stick in a single Arnstein footnote somewhere and that would give us an excuse to put it in the references! DrKiernan (talk) 08:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
My view, when you have a topic that is: (a) too large to be written about in one article; and (b) where the sub-articles are not yet fully developed or don't exist, is that for an article to make any claim to be 'comprehensive', it must point the reader to further reading. Wikipedia articles are really only a starting point for the interested reader. Once they have grasped the essentials of a topic, they should be able to refer to a section that enables them to read more if they so wish. The trouble with pointing readers to the works cited in the references is that this provides no guidance. Some of the works will be more suitable than others for further reading. Also, when only part of a work is used to cite something, there is still the need to alert the reader to whether the rest of that work is suitable for further reading. And if you don't have a particular work, it should still be mentioned. Not mentioning it at all arguably skews the article, as knowing that this other biography exists, but not mentioning it, is favouring one biography over another. So I think you need to either get hold of a copy of this biography, or refer the reader to it for further reading. At the moment, people reading this article are more likely to go and buy the Hibbert book for further reading than the Arnstein book (and many will not even realise that you have omitted mention of a major biography). For others reading this, the book in question is this one, published in 2003 (Queen Victoria by Walter L. Arnstein). Carcharoth (talk) 08:31, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As you wish. DrKiernan (talk) 08:57, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank-you. As a reader (not just as an editor), I do appreciate extra touches like that. Having now found the time to read through the entire article (which is excellent), I have a few additional comments, which I will put in a new section below. Carcharoth (talk) 09:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Very well-written and well-cited, this article deserves to be returned to the FA ranks. I had no idea so many people tried to shoot her! The only thing that jumped out about it for me was that you used semi-colons a great deal. I tend to do the same, and I've found that sometimes breaking it into two separate sentences reads better. But that's purely a stylistic point, not an objection. Also, the part near the end about her once-disputed parentage seems out of place. Is there a better place for it? Or is it there as the result of some prior discussion or compromise? --Coemgenus 18:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the support. The origin of the royal haemophilia surfaces occasionally on the talk page, e.g. Talk:Queen Victoria#Was queen Victoria a bastard?. I can't think of anywhere else it would naturally fit, unless all but the first sentence of that paragraph were moved to the Haemophilia in European royalty article. DrKiernan (talk) 08:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • I don't know. I guess because it's so big. I've revealed it to see what people think.
  • Yes, I know. I was deliberately saving that spot for Von Angeli's 1875/6 portrait where Victoria stares rather starkly straight at the viewer. I wanted to use that particularly for the caption I had in mind: Von Angeli's 1875 portrait was admired by Victoria for its "honesty, total want of flattery, and appreciation of character".[1] The only place I've found to steal it from (in color) is the ODNB but there's a strongly worded copyright notice on it, which scared me off. So, I was trying to find another version. Anyhow, I've selected my reserve option of a Punch cartoon instead.
  • No, I didn't know that either, but I did check and it is celebrated (in certain towns only not over the whole of Scotland). If it was challenged I'd probably prefer to take the opportunity to cut it.
  • I've chopped the section. I've never liked them anyway. But I've justed shifted the Cultural depictions link because the biographies don't really examine how she is portrayed in popular culture.

Overall, as I said above, an excellent article. I enjoyed reading it, and am leaning towards support. Carcharoth (talk) 10:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, responses interspersed. DrKiernan (talk) 17:04, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Punch cartoon is nice. Happy to support, and hopefully some of the subsidiary articles can be done over the next few months and years. That might also address Johnbod's desire for a more thematic approach, as subsidiary articles could do more to summarise opinions on various aspects, that there is little room for in the top-level article that this is. Some examples I spotted were a Diamond Jubilee article to go with the Golden Jubilee one, a wedding article (Royal weddings articles are all the rage at the moment, for some reason), numerous items associated with Victoria that could still have articles (I liked the one on Dash the spaniel!), and I'm sure some of the more famous artworks could have articles of their own. We even have an example of an article on one of the books: The Queen's Knight (Downer). I also liked The Triumphs of Oriana (1899). Anyway, just a few ideas. Carcharoth (talk) 05:12, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks. Yes, I enjoyed writing the snippet on Dash; it's one of my favorites too. DrKiernan (talk) 08:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why is there hidden text and an image linked in the infobox? Infoboxes are irritating enough without that, but text should not be hidden anywhere in articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:59, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm uncertain what you mean. Which parameters should be disposed of? (Try to resist the temptation to say all of them!) DrKiernan (talk) 08:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not a fan of infoboxes, so finding collapsible commentary there doesn't thrill me :) It's at "Queen of the United Kingdom (more...)" and "Issue more detail". No text should be hidden on FAs, not clear why that is hidden in the infobox. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:41, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
They're links not hidden text. I've made an edit to amend [4]. DrKiernan (talk) 14:34, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Better :) Terribly busy, but I'll get to this by the end of the day. I hope. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:36, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
  1. ^ St Aubyn, p. 335
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