Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mary of Teck

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 16:57, 28 June 2007.

[edit] Mary of Teck

Queen Consort of George V of the United Kingdom – Peer review • Talk • history

• Support. Self-nominated. DrKiernan 05:48, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
• I haven't read the article, but I noticed a couple of things. The article doesn't comply with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dashes)—specifically, I see hyphens used where en dashes should be. The fair use rationale of Image:Mary of Teck.jpg is a little weak. On somewhat of a side note, that image should be removed from articles where it does not qualify as fair use. Choker, for example. Pagrashtak 15:06, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks, dashes inserted. DrKiernan 07:32, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

• You can insert en dashes and em dashes with the edit box when you're in edit mode without the need for HTML code. Some of your – codes you inserted were replacing existing en dashes. En dashes and hyphens look very similar in the monospace edit window, but you can tell easily when you preview. Not a big deal though. I cleaned up the dashes and corrected some some others. Please check my edit and make sure I didn't miss any. Thanks, Pagrashtak 15:21, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

• Support: An excellent article, definitely of featured quality in my opinion (I mean, what else is there to know about her? We even find out, in a Pooterish detail, that she was big in the needlework community). I don't have the reservation about the prose that I had for Wallis Simpson: this one reads very cleanly, and in places the prose strikes me as encyclopedically exemplary (the essential information in the clearest language).

A few minor points:

• Her background: I felt the lack of an explanation of why an English woman had a foreign title and background. I gradually worked it out by looking at the tables, etc., but the reader might need slightly more help at the beginning, where I presumed I was going to be reading about a foreign consort, which up to that time had been the usual thing.

• Amended the lead.

• There they were joined by their six children: Edward, Albert, Mary, Henry, George, and John.

For me, this was phrased a little strangely, as it sounds as if a stork had passed over the house and parcel-dropped the children one afternoon. I didn't copy edit it because I'm not entirely sure how long they all lived there (or I might have changed it to "brought up their six children").

• Isn't that how babies are delivered?

• I would have liked a touch more detail on Prince John. The article said he'd been "kept away" on the Sandringham estate, but since they already lived on the Sandringham estate, I think it needs to be made slightly clearer what was going on. I've changed it to "hidden away"; was he not even allowed to live in the cottage with them? I do remember seeing Poliakoff's television play about him, but I don't know how accurate it was. It seems to me that the question of John's treatment is crucial to our sense of Mary as a mother.

• I've amended this slightly.

• In the quotation "Her soft voice...", my copyediting fingers itched to put a comma after "treasures", but I don't know if there was one in the original quote.

• There's no comma in my version.

• We hear that George became ill and died, but not what of.

• Amended.

• "she supported the war effort by visiting troops and factories, and helping to gather scrap materials"

Could this be made slightly clearer? At the moment I have a picture of her tottering about in her high-heels, helping out a couple of rag-and-bone men.

• :-)

• Some ISBNs missing. Not a big deal, but it's a shame not to have them when the article is so meticulously referenced.

Anyway, congratulations. Another fine article by the docmeister.qp10qp 01:17, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks a lot, your edits have certainly improved it! DrKiernan 07:32, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

• Support. Very nice. --maclean 19:00, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

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.