Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Harriet Tubman

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 03:02, 26 November 2007.

I've worked on this article for the past few weeks, adding all the relevant info I could find from five biographies. Two (Larson and Clinton) are heavily cited, because they are the only adult bios published since 1943. It has been thoroughly peer reviewed. Thank you in advance for participating in the process. – Scartol · Talk 03:26, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comments Support - I like the article, but think I should mention these issues first.

• If everyone new her as Harriet Tubman, then why is her birth name prominently featured in the infobox? Her birth name is already displayed well in the first sentence of the article. It doesn't look too hot formatting wise, either.

• I was under the impression that the style used here was standard, but after looking around I can't find other examples. So  Done I've removed her birth name from the infobox. – Scartol · Talk 12:48, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• I am, of course, in favor of removing the infobox altogether. :) Awadewit | talk 23:54, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Are there any more images or paintings of Tubman during the time she was helping the slaves? Looking at pictures of people who the article doesn't belong to seems a little un-encyclopedic; if no more images of Ms. Tubman can be found you may want to remove some of the ones of other people, focusing more attention on the article's subject.

• Actually, I think four pictures of her is a fair number. The other images are designed to give context and draw in readers who are interested in the different aspects of her life. – Scartol · Talk 12:48, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• The pictures seem well-chosen to me. Awadewit | talk 23:54, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Correct me if I'm wrong, but the book reference formatting is not completely correct (although Harry S. Truman's is similar, but you might want to visit Ronald Reagan)

If I may respond to just this one point. Though this article uses a different style than Ronald Reagan it is internally consistent and both are valid styles. (I actually slightly prefer Harriet's style. It's more concise, but creates no ambiguity.) --JayHenry 07:50, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• I prefer HT's style as well, which has been used for quite a few FAs (speaking from experience). Awadewit | talk 23:54, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, the article is very well cited and it was an intersting read. Happyme22 (talk) 04:29, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well that seems to take care of it. Great job! Happyme22 (talk) 01:30, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Support I made my comments at peer review. They were all addressed. DrKiernan 08:28, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - I visited this article less than a couple of weeks ago, and found myself despairing at the lack of content for such an important subject. Scartol's expansion of the article is remarkable. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 09:20, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. A very impressive article, as I said at the peer review. The industrious Scartol has done wonders and managed to avoid the pitfalls of articles based partly on oral history. I had never heard of Tubman until last week, and this article was the perfect introduction. -- qp10qp (talk) 22:25, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Wonderfully well-written and engaging article. I was really shocked to learn that there isn't more written on Tubman. I suppose I was misled by all of those juvenile biographies I read as a child - I assumed that would be mirrored by adult biographies. A few tweaks:

• When a powerful Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, she helped guide fugitives further north into Canada, and helped newly-freed slaves find work. - "far-reaching" rather than "powerful", perhaps?

• She died in 1913, and became one of the most well-known individuals in American history. - I think that the statement about her iconicity in American history could be made a bit more precise than this.

• At the age of five, she was hired to a woman named "Miss Susan" as a nursemaid. - "hired out"?

• Tubman at first prepared to storm their house and make trouble, but then decided he wasn't worth the trouble. - repetition of "trouble"

• I would like to see expanded captions under the portraits per WP:CAPTIONS. I think it adds that little extra to the article. (I've been converted ever since Joseph Priestley.)

• "Jailbreak Out Of History, a re-biography of Harriet Tubman" A chapter of a work-in-progress - This link seems to be to a self-published book. That seems sketchy to me.

Another excellent article by Scartol! Awadewit | talk 23:54, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much, Awad. I've made all the repairs you've indicated, except for the captions – I'll expand them later. (In a way I think smaller captions may entice people to read more of the article: "Hmm. I wonder how she was involved with Frederick Douglass?" But I can see the value in expanding them too.) I wanted to remove the "Jailbreak" link, but I always hate removing stuff that people might have added in good faith. (That's why I had to rewrite a big chunk of the lead during the Peer Review process. I'm too nice!) Cheers. – Scartol · Talk 00:45, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Whereas I just slash and burn. :) Awadewit | talk 01:08, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've expanded the captions, although I'm having trouble dealing with the two conflicting directives:

1. Captions should not be complete sentences
2. Captions should be descriptive and evocative

It was hard to do both at once, unless I wanted to use nothing but "[name], who worked with Tubman…" constructions. If you have ideas on how to make them better, be my guest. – Scartol · Talk 12:18, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I am aware, captions can be full sentences. This is evidenced by the MOS rule that states that captions that are full sentences must end in a period and those that are not should not! (wherever that is). Anyway, I think the captions are much better. Perhaps the only one that could still be improved is the Hunter one. Awadewit | talk 00:59, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Captions should not be complete sentences." I've never heard that directive on Wikipedia. Is that in the Captions manual of style? Ironically, I'm pretty sure that it used to recommend that all captions be complete sentences back in the old days. I tend to favor complete sentences and longer captions myself, although I believe both styles are acceptable. Kaldari (talk) 00:26, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, WP:CAPTIONS, which Awad cited earlier, seems ambiguous. I've only recently read that (silly me), basing my understanding of how they work on WP:MOS#Captions, which says: "Most captions are not complete sentences, but extended phrases, which should not finish with a period." Maybe we need to reconcile these? (Yeah, right. Proposing a change to MoS is like sticking one's finger in a Cuisinart.) – Scartol • Tok 01:56, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Support - Very well referenced. But if it is a good article and has undergone a peer review, should not those two events be listed in an Article History template on the talk page? Currently, there is none, and the wikiprojects are still incorrectly rated as "B", instead of "GA". Curt Wilhelm VonSavage (talk) 07:44, 20 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]

• "GA" is only for those articles that have gone through the GA process. Awadewit | talk 08:25, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• I bypassed the GA process, since I figured my work with Balzac and Chinua Achebe had given me the footing to jump right to FAC. The article was peer reviewed, however – as noted above. – Scartol • Tok 12:37, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Support Certainly meets the FA criteria: well-written, well-referenced, and in compliance with the manual of style so far as I can tell. A strong article on a vital subject of U.S. history. VanTucky ^Talk 21:03, 20 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.