Talk:John Haynes (governor)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: –MuZemike 01:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Prose issues

• Although John Winthrop ... political competition between Haynes and Winthrop. - First, the sentence is too long and drawn out. Second, after reading the sentence, it really doesn't make much sense. I think it also needs a rewrite to make more sense. Rephrased Magic♪piano 20:25, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
• The creation of the Fundamental Orders was probably dominated by Haynes and Ludlow, the colony's principal legal minds, and Thomas Hooker, who was known to advocate for the liberties the document enshrines. - "dominated" sounds like a fairly loaded and non-neutral term. Can you replace it with something that fits more into the context and is more neutral? Rephrased Magic♪piano 20:25, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
• This dispute came to blows in the 1640s ... - What does "came to blows" mean? I don't think many readers will readily understand that, either. Rephrased Magic♪piano 20:25, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
• Citations normally end with periods (as in the "References" section), which should also be the case with the Harvard citations in the "Notes" section.
  • I've never had to do this before (many GAs, half-dozen FAs). My rule of thumb is that the citations have to be consistent in their format (styleguide pages like WP:CITEHOW are not prescriptive on precise formatting.) Magic♪piano 20:25, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Neutrality issue

• Due to a lack of detailed documentation, the exact role Haynes role played in the colony's political activities is unclear, although it was undoubtedly significant. - that last part "although it was undoubtedly significant" is not very neutral in wording and seems more like you're editorializing there. Please rewrite that without the suggestive vocabulary. Struck I figured that was going to get noticed. :) Magic♪piano 20:25, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Conclusions

In progress - I still need to go through the references in (the ones which I can readily access) to double-check and verify the material with the sources, but the prose isn't too bad, but there are some corrections that need to be made above. There is also the neutrality issue above.

A couple of suggestions is to double-check your comma usage next time (as some were in places that shouldn't have that I corrected). Also, try to find a picture of Haynes; I know a picture of him is located here, but it's not PD, as it was painted in 1934. Perhaps there is something else out there? (Note: I won't fail the nomination if none is found, as having a picture is not required; I'm just surprised there is not a free picture of him out there.) –MuZemike 01:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The picture of Haynes at CSLib isn't actually of Haynes, I believe they claim it's more likely of his son Hezekiah. I had that one removed from Commons because of the copyvio (there's an argument to bring it into WP under a fair use rationale on the Hezekiah Haynes article). Having spent time trying to (a) verify provenance on a number of images of Massachusetts magistrates, and (b) find usable images of others, I'm not surprised there are no extant images of Haynes and other magistrates. It's a shame, since a number of claimed images of these figures have been debunked in the 20th century. (So far, besides Haynes, I've discovered that images in WP of Thomas Dudley, Richard Bellingham, and Jonathan Belcher aren't of them, and an image not in WP claimed to be of William Tailer is a forgery.) Magic♪piano 20:25, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Passed – First off, sorry for the delay in the review, as I was busy IRL the past couple of days, which didn't give me time to sit down and go over in more detail. Everything that I could readily verify looks good, so there aren't any verifiability issues present. All the issues above look good, now; I took care of the punctuation in the citations myself. The reason I request that was due to consistency with the rest of the citations and the fact that most manuals of style out there normally require them (i.e. why would be expect to be any different?). Anyways, it's a minor enough of an issue in that I wouldn't lose much sleep over anyways if you still disagree, and I don't think that should readily get in the way of the GA standards. Anyways nice work on the article; it's good to see someone put some good research into a relatively unknown figure in America's early history. –MuZemike 06:22, 25 March 2011 (UTC)