Talk:Boston Society for Medical Improvement

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Boston Society for Medical Improvement/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Rationalobserver (talk · contribs) 19:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Lead

• It was established in 1828[1]

Per WP:LEADCITE, there is no need to cite this in the lead, as it should be sourced in the article body.

• "the cultivation of confidence and good feeling between members of the profession; the eliciting and imparting of information ..."

I can't help but feel that too much of the lead, which is kinda short for a thousand word article, is a quote. Can this quote be summarized?

Founding and organization

• "a Secretary, a Cabinet Keeper, a Librarian, and a Committee of four, who, with the Secretary, shall be called the Prudential Committee"

This quote should be paraphrased, as lists like this hold little to no creative value, so it's preferable to summarize versus direct quoting.

• Members (required to be practicing Boston physicians) were admitted in April and October.[8]

I think it would be nice to avoid these brackets if possible, maybe: "Members, who were required to be practicing Boston physicians, were admitted in April and October.[8]"

History

• (now the New England Journal of Medicine[11])

I'd also lose the brackets here, and set-off the clause with commas instead.

• The Society limited its membership to Boston's medical elite.

Is this repeating, Members (required to be practicing Boston physicians)?

• with about 25 attending any given meeting

I would swap about for approximately or an equivalent, for encyclopedic tone.

• This piqued the interest of Oliver Wendell Holmes

I think just Holmes here, since he's been recently introduced above.

• presented his essay "The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever" to the Society on February 13, 1843

"The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever" is in apposition, so it should be set off with commas.

• (The preceding and subsequent presentations of the day were a stalagmite "remarkable for its singular resemblance to a petrified penis", and a child cured of a swollen ankle by a Dr. Strong.)[22][23][24]

I think many of these parentheticals should be worked into the prose and set off with commas, as your use of brackets is a bit excessive, IMO.

• (The office of President was instituted as part of an attempt to stem this decline; the first president was James H. White.)[4]

This is a good example of excessive use of brackets, which should be used sparingly, if at all.

• On November 19, 1890, the Society held a special meeting in honor of Henry J. Bigelow, who had recently died.[30][31][32] The Boston Society for Medical Observation was merged into the Society for Medical Improvement in 1894.[13][14][33] In 1901, James Gregory Mumford published The Story of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement in the March issue of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.

Work on transitional sentences that help carry the narrative through sections that are in danger of reading as a list of related facts and lacking proper flow. This is one of the more challenging element of good writing, but I think you can agree that these there sentences are not fluid.

• the proposal was rejected, however, both by the library

When you use however in teh same way you might use nonetheless, it should be preceded by a semi-colon, like this: "the proposal was rejected; however, both by the library".

• By this time the Society had reduced its meetings to an annual occurrence, and it was generally viewed as "undesirable to hold many meetings" due to the fact that the Medical Library and the Suffolk District Medical Society had begun to hold joint meetings.

Find a way to avoid one or tow of the uses of meetings, as this is too many for one sentence.

Collection

• The curator was tasked with keeping a catalog of the specimens in the cabinet, including a case history for each specimen.

Reword; maybe: "The curator was tasked with keeping a catalog and a case history of each specimen in the cabinet."

• In the first volume, the specimens of the cabinet were divided into fifteen sections: "healthy bones", "diseased bones", "soft parts about the bones", "heart and blood vessels",

I don't think you need to put each item inside quote marks, as they are examples of shared language and generic labels, which do not constitute creative writing to the extent that you need to quote them.

• the Cabinet was curated by J.B.S. Jackson[40] (also curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum from 1847 on).

J.B.S. Jackson and Warren Anatomical Museum are already linked previously in the article, so unless it's necessarily for a specific reason avoid doing this.

Locations

The unique elements in this section should be integrated into the article, as much of it is repetitive to your mentions of location changes in History and elsewhere. There are also three duplicate links in this section, which should be avoided if not necessary.

Sourcing

Your sourcing looks pretty tight; nice work!

Conclusion

This is a nice piece of work that is already pretty much GA level, but I'd like to hear your response to my review before passing, though I think that's kinda a forgone conclusion at this point. I do wish the narrative flowed better, as parts seem a bit listy, as mentioned above, but I'm sure it's nothing that you can't fix with a few well-planned copyedits.

Reply

Lead

The unnecessary citation has been removed. The quote is there because I felt it best summed up the what the society is all about. It's also acceptable for use, since public domain materials don't have the fair-use restrictions that other quotations do, per WP:COPYQUOTE.

Founding and organization

The quote has been replaced with a paraphrased version. I removed the parentheses by restoring it to my original wording. Most of the brackets were actually added by another user.

History

I think the brackets around (now the New England Journal of Medicine[11]) are appropriate.

Medical elite: no. The first sentence explains the criteria for membership. This one is showing how a number of people were excluded from the society.

about→approximately: done.

Holmes: done.

The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever: done.

Gage: once again, I just restored my original wording.

President: fixed.

Flow: I split the big paragraph into two smaller ones ([1], [2]): hopefully that makes it so they don't seem related.

However: I believe that the current usage is correct.

Meetings: fixed.

Collection

Curators job: condensed, using your suggested wording.

Quotes: done.

Duplicate links: removed.

Locations

I have removed the dup links in the section [3], but I don't think I can integrate it into the history section, since a number of the locations don't have dates attached to them.

Conclusion

I hope that has addressed most of the issues; I'll try to work on copyediting it over the next few hours. Also, I would like to ping @EEng:, since they contributed to the article and may want to weigh in on the review. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 16:23, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Second opinion

While all of the reviewer's commentsare well-meant, and many or most I might agree with, almost none come within the bounds of the requirements of WP:GACR -- they're mostly stylistic choices that should be discussed or boldly edited in according to the normal mode of article development, not in the context of a GA review. (Straight-out errors in grammar etc. the reviewer should fix directly, with an appropriate edit summary and without comment here.) Too many GA reviews get caught up in the reviewer's personal preferences instead of sticking to GACR. The fact that there may be obvious, even easy ways the article can be improved should not delay GA approval if it meets those standards. EEng (talk) 17:10, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Would you pass the GAN? Rationalobserver (talk) 17:12, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes I would. The only possible questions would be with respect to (3a) "it addresses the main aspects of the topic" and (1) "Well-written ... the prose is clear and concise". (3a) can only be judged on the sources that seem to be available, and a general sense of what ought to be in an article on a subject like this; based on this it passes 3a. For 1a, see the very good advice at WP:What_the_Good_article_criteria_are_not#.281.29_Well-written; your comments are very useful, but almost all are well beyond correct grammar and usage + "The meaning of each sentence or paragraph is clear and not confusing, even if you might have phrased it differently". The small number of clear grammar or mechanics errors you can just fix yourself. The only things which ought to be showing up as review comments (with regard to 1a, anyway) are errors (not stylistic choices) that you don't see how to fix yourself. After the review is over I'm sure G S Palmer would love for you to help improve the article in ways not covered by the GACR, if you're so inclined. EEng (talk) 17:28, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice. I've passed this GAN and added the article to the GA list. Rationalobserver (talk) 17:34, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Wow. For once common sense and logic prevail in WP Talk space (though I would have expected nothing less from a Rationalobserver). EEng (talk) 17:37, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Mumford source

Is there any reason why we are citing various editions of the Mumford source and why we are using at least two different styles of citation for it? Were there changes made in the reprinted versions of the original journal article? - Sitush (talk) 10:02, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

@Sitush: because one (that cited in the bibliography) is a PDF version of the book, whereas the other two are records of its publication with bibliographic information. If you object, those two could be replaced with the primary source, something like <ref name="p0">Mumford (1901)</ref>. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 13:21, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

The article fails WP:CITEVAR, I think. It is certainly confusing. The PDF claims to be a 1901 reprint of the journal article that first appeared in March of that year; elsewhere we link directly to the (subscription-only) doi but doesn't note that it is subscription-only. You've also used the doi both as a parameter and as the url, which is redundant.

Which of the two variants did you actually read? The paywalled version or the reprint? I suspect the latter. - Sitush (talk) 13:57, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

@Sitush: since you find the current version confusing, I have simplified the citations. And yes, I read the reprint. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 14:06, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks. If you read the reprint then that is what we should cite: it is not unknown for reprints to differ from originals, which is perhaps one reason why the |edition parameter is available in some citation templates.

The article remains inconsistent per CITEVAR: it uses different styles of citation, which is generally deprecated. I could fix this but I don't know which way you prefer to take it, ie: all in some sort of Harvard format (eg: {{sfn}}) or all using the {{cite}} templates, or something else. I can't remember if this would amount to a straight GA fail but it certainly should do. I'm not sure if the reviewer(s) picked up on it but there was a very odd comment relating to something else above along the lines of "we can pass it then fix it". Perhaps there are WikiCup gremlins here (people involved in that sometimes rush things to rack up points) but, whatever it may be, it would be good if we can reach some sort of agreement and straighten it out. I occasionally stray into medical history territory myself and I found this to be an interesting read. - Sitush (talk) 14:58, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

@Sitush: forgive me if I'm being stupid, but I don't see how it fails CITEVAR. The citation style is simple: I use one (inline) reference where only one page of the work is referenced, and where more than one page is referenced, the source goes in the "Bibliography" section and I cite individual pages in {{sfn}}-like style. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 15:50, 2 February 2015 (UTC) (If you're referring to the "Constitution and by-laws" source, I would cite it in the style of the Mumford and Jackson sources, but I can't as it doesn't have an author. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 15:54, 2 February 2015 (UTC))

So, effectively, you have three styles: one for single-page, one for multiple page with author present and one for multiple page with no author. That isn't consistent in my eyes, it's confusing and unnecessary. But, hey, there is no accounting for taste ;) - Sitush (talk) 07:11, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

@Sitush: Well, I'm open to suggestions. It does bug me that I can't find an easier way to cite the latter, but I really can't think of one. Of course, it probably wouldn't be too hard to dispose of the "Bibliography" section and cite them all inline using {{rp}}. What do you think? G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 00:08, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

FTR, the Wikipedia:Good article criteria says nothing about consistency of citations, and it requires only that the material in the article be verifiable. Rationalobserver (talk) 16:35, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

In addition to not requiring citation consistency, note 1 says: "Good articles are only measured against the good article criteria; at the time of assessment, they may or may not meet featured article criteria", and note 2 says: "Compliance with other aspects of the Manual of Style, or the Manual of Style mainpage or subpages of the guides listed, is not required for good articles." [original emphasis] Rationalobserver (talk) 00:14, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

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