Talk:Norman Selfe/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: James086 (talk · contribs) 13:43, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

• In the family section "Sydney did not disappoint. The rapidly developing metropolis..." I think a semicolon or comma would better suit here.
• "The impact of refrigeration on the colony and the global food trade cannot be overestimated." - This comes across like a peacock term. Perhaps just change the following sentence to say "Refrigeration revolutionised farming, allowing..."
• "What was needed was an overhaul of the education system at all levels, from kindergarten to tertiary study." - This appears to be Selfe's opinion rather than a hard fact, I suggest something like "Selfe believed and overhaul of the education system at all levels was needed, from kindergarten to tertiary study."
• Images and references look good, I must assume the information is sourced but the citations are well formatted.
• The writing style is definitely engaging. On hold until these are addressed but they are quite minor. Excellent work. James086^Talk 13:43, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks James. I've made the changes as suggested (diff). I can't take cretid for the quality of the writing though :-) As you see at the bottom, the vast majority of this text is written by Catherine Freyne and imported from the "Dictionary of Sydney" as CC-BY-SA. What makes this a bit tricky though, and where I'd like you to have a close look in your reviewing, is where I've also cited the Dictionary of Sydney as a source. This article is a bit unusual in that, because the Dictionary is a freely licensed Reliable Source publisher, in some instances sentences are both copied from and footnoted to the same place. Wherever the Dictionary cites an offline source that I have not been able to personally access I've indicated this in the footnote as "xyz cited in Freyne (2009)". You'll see I've done the same with two other Good Article rated articles - Florence Violet McKenzie and Henri L'Estrange. I'd like if you could check these footnotes (especially the ones using the short-footnote template) to make sure they're consistent and correct (of if there's a more efficient way of doing it). Thanks, Wittylama 03:14, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

• Ref 12b for the quote in technical education isn't correct. It should line up with citation 37 from the Dictionary of Sydney.
• Refs notes 39, 40 and 50 should also point to this new citation (I don't believe a change needs to be made to them).
• I think the following 4 citations could be moved to the bibliography section so that it's clearer to the reader where the full citation is in later references (when just the author, date and page number is used). This is not enforced by the citation guideline however, it's optional, it just might make it easier to find the original citations.
  • [2] Mandelson, L.A. (1972). "Norman Selfe and the Beginnings of Technical Education". In C. Turney. Pioneers of Australian Education. Sydney, Sydney University Press. ISBN 0-424-06440-5.
  • [9] Arthur, Ian (2001). Norman Selfe, Man of the North Shore. unpublished essay submitted for the North Shore History Prize. Cited in Freyne (2009)
  • [12] Selfe, Norman (1990). "Annual Address Delivered to the Engineering Section of the Royal Society of NS Wales, June 20th, 1900". published in Journal of the Royal Society of New South Wales 34, ISSN 0035-9173. Cited in Freyne (2009).
  • [41] Neill, Norm (1991). Technically & Further: Sydney Technical College 1891–1991. Sydney, Hale & Iremonger.
• Otherwise the referencing via the Dictionary of Sydney seems fine. James086^Talk 16:29, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Wow - how did you find that 12b one - that's quite correct but damn hard to spot! I'd written the whole text of that reference in the code, but because I stuffed up the refname (I think) it was not showing properly. I've done this diff which I believe addresses your first two points.

I also added the Mandelson and Neill books to the bibliography (and found the ISBN for Neill) diff. I chose not to include the Selfe or the Arthur works because the Selfe one is a primary source (and if I include that one, then why not all of the other things that he's written and have been republished) and the Arthur one is an unpublished essay that is not available for readers to find. Wittylama 03:06, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Well you did ask for a close look at the references ;) As you said, it was just the ref name for 12b and the other references that pointed to it. What you've done with the bibliography seems logical. Nice work. James086^Talk 12:32, 7 January 2013 (UTC)