Talk:Jordan of Bristol

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Saint Jordan of Bristol/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Kim Post (talk · contribs) 03:07, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Overall: This article shows great promise, but it has an extreme historiographical focus. Does this give due weight to all the reliable sources? For broad coverage, some of the standard questions with regard to saints ought to be touched upon: for example, is Jordan venerated in the Catholic Church? Even absence from important sources can be useful; e.g. it would be significant to point out if a saint does not appear in the Roman Martyrology. Perhaps there is a Church of England equivalent as well. Also, is there anything in the sources about influence on the city's secular culture, tourism, etc.? The other touch-ups needed are small.

Prose

• Keep disputed facts with a nuanced discussion out of the infobox; his residence in Bristol is agreeable, but discussion of whether he lived in Rome is better for the body of the article—and moreover if he did, he is not really associated with his time there.
• I am not sure what "Pre-congregation" means for "Canonized" in the infobox. At least a wikilink might be appropriate here.
• The historiographical discussion is easier to follow if it plainly summarizes some of the agreed-upon facts, before delving into specific historians' arguments.
• Is there a reasons historians are not quoted in chronological order? Presumably they are responding to each other, so this is a natural way to present them. A usual exception is that a summary of the modern view often comes before mentioning outdated interpretations, but there does not seem to be a consensus in this case.
• The "Historicity" section does not mainly deal with his historicity. Moreover, because the facts of his life are so much the subject of debate, it may not be sensible to have this as a separate section. This is a better fit for someone where there is a very clear traditional narrative which historians have doubted the historicity of.
• In anticipation of edits, I'll wait to do a thorough proofreading. Prose review:

1. I have BOLDly made some prose improvements. Please revert as you think prudent.
2. The lead says he was venerated "before the Reformation", which suggests he is not venerated anymore today; is that true? In any case the article does not say anything about how the Reformation affected his veneration.
3. The Peter Fleming quote under Veneration is very long. I think it could be summarized and quoted in a shorter way.
4. The section division into "Life", "Veneration" and "Historicity" is not how the prose is actually divided. These topics run together and the article repeats itself sometimes. Check that you've exhausted the relevant sources, and then try to reorganize the content.
5. At some points the article could use some higher summarization before delving into the arguments of specific historians. In particular, there is not much direct evidence, so this could be easily summarized before the interpretations of the evidence. Kim Post (talk) 20:21, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

MOS

• The lead must be expanded to summarize the most important contents of the article. Two paragraphs would be suitable. For the disputed issues, perhaps summarize the evidence and boil down each competing view to one sentence each—it's a challenge, but that is what makes a good lead so useful.

Reliable sources/original research

• Generally great!
• The infobox section on his attributes cites his icon in Bristol Cathedral. If you are citing your interpretation of the icon, that's classic original research. Saints' attributes describe recognizable symbols between different depictions (usually by very different artists), so that describing a single icon is not a suitable way to go about this interpretation either. I don't think him being a companion of St. Augustine is something that's an attribute, unless they are commonly depicted together. Don't be afraid to leave this blank if the reliable sources don't mention it.
• The BBC article is not a good source for Jordan being the patron of Bristol, and the University of Bristol press release actually puts "patron saint" in quotes, as if to say he isn't really. Fleming touches on this a little, saying Bristol has no widely-recognized patron but nevertheless mentioning Jordan; I think it would be appropriate to keep Bristol as patronage place in the infobox with a citation to Fleming or another historian.
• Did the Dissolution of the Monasteries forbid the veneration of Jordan as a saint? That is what suppression of a cult would mean in the Catholic Church, so I'm not sure the infobox uses it appropriately here. It is not cited or mentioned in the body.
• Unlike the Featured Article criteria, Good Article criteria don't require conformity to any system of citation. As you work though, consider consistency in date formats and capitalization, or avoiding things like giving a publisher with the same name as the website (not recommended by major style guides).

Images

• File:SaintJordanofBristol.jpg is licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0, but what about the copyright status of the icon itself? If it is not in the public domain, your photo is not free. See Commons:derivative works. (My reading of Commons:FOP UK is that freedom of panorama does not apply here.) The file description page needs to at least include a year of publication to show the icon is not copyrighted. Information about when it was made and installed in the chapel might also go well in the body of the article.
• For File:StJordansChapel.png, kindly provide the immediate source of the image on the file description page. Where did you find the map image that this is a detail of? E.g. a URL for the original image. Commons requires this to verify license claims, and it's helpful to anyone who might also want to use that source.

• Thank you for the feedback - for the icon, I had the permission of the author to use the photo that I took. In this case, do you know what I would have to do that's missing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Androsblogger (talk • contribs) 04:22, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

• @Androsblogger: Wikimedia needs to confirm the author's permission to release the icon under a free license, see Commons:OTRS. You can give her the URL for the file and point her to Commons:Wikimedia OTRS release generator. Then you put Commons:Template:OP on the description page while it's pending. One of the OTRS volunteers will update the file description page (a long time later) when they get the confirmation, but I don't think we have to wait for that for this GA review. Kim Post (talk) 04:57, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

• She didn't say she wanted to release the icon image itself as a free license; she just gave me permission to upload my photo featuring her icon to the page as long as I credited her as the author of the icon. Is that the same thing? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Androsblogger (talk • contribs) 06:03, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
• The icon could be linked to without having the image on Wikipedia: http://www.elenisicons.co.uk/ei/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Jordan.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.158.250.90 (talk) 06:23, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
• Having said that, it seems to me that an icon exhibited in a church is more akin to a sculpture or a work of "artistic craftsmanship" than a painting or a simply "graphic" work; perhaps in this case, it would be better then to only have the icon featured in a panorama of the church, while still crediting the author of the icon in the caption. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Androsblogger (talk • contribs) 06:47, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

• If she does not want to release the icon under a free license you need another reason that the image is free. (Permission for use on Wikipedia alone is not accepted here, because we want people to be able to reuse Wikipedia content.) I don't pretend to be an expert on freedom of panorama in the UK; if you think it applies and you are relying on this to claim the image is free, then it should be tagged with Template:FoP-UK to say so. Other options would be de minimis use as a small part of a larger image of the church, or to move a low-resolution version from Commons to Wikipedia as non-free content, which would require critical discussion of the icon itself in the article. Kim Post (talk) 17:02, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Other

• Article titles are not a Good Article criterion, but per WP:SAINTS I would move this from Saint Jordan of Bristol → Jordan of Bristol.