Talk:Prayer of Saint Francis/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: I'll take this surprising and informative article on. Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 16:52, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick & thorough review & suggestions. I tried to address everything, with brief replies interspersed below. See what you think... Patrug (talk) 06:47, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Comments

I have few if any problems to raise with this clearly-written and well-cited article, and those are very minor, mainly stylistic. Love the work of peace and justice by that warlord William the Conq., btw.

 Question: With peace astonishingly attributed to the conqueror, I pondered adding a phrase like: "without apparent irony" – or would this cross the line from lively prose into inappropriate WP:Editorializing?

It's certainly getting close to the line. Prof. Google can't find a suitable source, either.

There's a similar statement at La naissance du Souvenir Normand: "In the mind of Rochethulon and his friend Pierrefitte, Normandy can serve as a bridge to friendship between France and England, enemies of yesterday. But the bells of Corneville did not sound the end of the Hundred Years War. They have not proclaimed Peace."

Upon reflection, though, St. Francis would probably advise not rubbing anyone's nose in it!

The style of adding page numerals in the text to refs is used only for ref 1. It would be much nicer to make this a named Source, and to use Harvard links (e.g. {{sfn|Renoux|2001|pp=27–28}} ... Sources: {{cite book|last=Renoux|date=2001| ...|ref=harv}} ) to keep the numerals tidily within the References section.

 Done. I usually try to avoid Harvard links, so readers won't need to check two sections to assemble the info. But since this article has only one book source with multiple page refs, the {{rp}} citation format was a bit awkward, too. See if the new version looks better to you.

Text: the heading "French original, English translation" isn't perhaps ideal. Why not use these two phrases as column headers in the translation table?

 Done. Nice idea.

Text: "copyright expired" isn't something we should have in the main text. If you feel it must be said, it could go in a footnote ({{efn|The copyright ...}}) or be mentioned at the end of ref 4.

 Question: Actually, this has been a major issue throughout the article's Edit history. Since so many readers are familiar with the prayer, we've had over 100 edits endlessly adding, changing, and deleting different versions of the text. Most of these well-intentioned editors never realized that their favorite versions of a famous prayer would be protected by copyright, so now the article makes this explicit to readers, and notes that the original French version is an exception. On the Talk page, admin SarekOfVulcan agreed with this approach, in the hope of finally breaking the article's cycle of instability & copyvio – and indeed it's been much better in the three months since then. In light of this situation, do you think we could keep the copyright pointers in the text as a "lesser evil"?

Fine, exceptions are right when there are exceptional justifications.

Text: the heading "Consistency with Saint Francis?" is unusual (probably against WP:MOS, but let's not go there) in having a question mark; it would be better phrased without one.

 Done. To maintain neutrality, I just changed it to "Franciscan viewpoints" – see if you like it better.

Text: "friar/historian" is not the finest use of English. Please rephrase it.

 Done. It looks like Father Thompson is often described as a "church historian", so I switched to that.

Text: "the phrasing of the first half of the text is atypically self-oriented" - I presume that this means up to "let me bring joy" as each such sentence contains "que je mette". If this is the intention, I suggest you say so explicitly.

 Done. I had the exact Thompson quote in the footnote, but now I've added the point directly to the text. ("let me...")

Giles of Assisi: why not give his dates in parentheses? That would instantly set him in his time context.

 Done. Along the same lines, I added Francis's dates to the lead.

Sebastian Temple: not sure the parentheses giving his full name work too well. Perhaps this should be cited in a footnote. Actually, is it cited at all? It isn't in ref 10. Maybe we need an additional ref here.

 Question: Good catch – I just added a book ref. This section is the re-direct target of Sebastian Temple and the only place his birth name appears in English WP, unless & until a bio page is created for him. So, it's probably best not to bury it in a footnote. If I trim the text to show just his official name & dates, "Johann Sebastian von Tempelhoff (1928–1997)" without repeating his professional pseudonym "Sebastian Temple" from the subsection header, would it still be clear that both names are referring to the same person? Or just keep the current "Sebastian Temple (Johann Sebastian von Tempelhoff, 1928–1997)" for full clarity?

OK.

Sinéad O'Connor: suggest we gloss her along the lines of "the irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O'Connor ...".

 Done. I just put "singer", to minimize any misconception that it might be one of her own compositions – and because "singer-songwriter" is the same grammatical fudge as "friar/historian"!

Very good!

"by notable musicians": everything we mention should be notable. Best drop the adj.

"Other notable invocations": as above. Perhaps simply "Invocations".

 Question: According to guidelines like WP:AOAL, embedded lists don't actually require notability for individual entries. So, for years of the article's Edit history, its music & quotation lists were magnets for indiscriminate trivia from our million-plus readers, until we explicitly added notability as a selection criterion. For the sake of minimizing future instability & trivia, could we please keep this notability criterion visible to readers?

OK.

"Other notable invocations": the text is formatted as a list. This does not seem necessary here. Why not drop the list bullets and write it up as one or two paragraphs. You might consider using a few subheadings - say, By religious leaders, By politicians, By others.

 Done. This might also help reduce the temptation to add indiscriminate trivia.

Paragraphed and cited text is certainly much less of a "spam magnet" than an uncited bullet-list.

"Saint Teresa of Kolkata" - the article is more familiarly called "Mother Teresa": suggest we use the direct link title. Add "of Calcutta" if you like.

 Done. The text actually matched your suggestion until an unregistered user changed it a few months ago. I just changed it back, to follow the same WP:RECOGNIZABLE policy that justifies keeping our title as the misnomer "Prayer of Saint Francis".

Summary

I hope you're pleased by the result of the review, which to my eye is a sharper article. I'm happy to award it a GA now. Excellent work! Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:07, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for lending your expertise, with such an efficient & constructive review. As Francis might or might not have said: Peace be with you! —Patrug (talk) 20:27, 5 June 2017 (UTC)