Talk:Samuel Finer

Targeted for revision

This article has been targeted for improvement by the Civil-military relations community. Inbody (talk) 23:48, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

A few comments

Okay, I have no knowledge or interest whatsoever regarding this person, so I can't say anything about the content. A few comments on the style, though:

1. The "Acknowledgements" section pretty badly breaks Wikipedia:Avoid self-references, which basically means that an article should not refer to the fact that it is a Wikipedia article. It is much better to replace it with a "References" section describing the exact sources.
2. The introduction (the part before the TOC) could probably use a bit more information. Generally, the introduction should be a summary of the most important and interesting facts of the article.
3. To be pedantic, I think you got the order of the closing sections wrong. The preferred way is, if I'm not mistaken, "See also", then "References", then "External links".

Hope this helps. -- Meni Rosenfeld (talk) 19:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

It helps. Will action. AWhiteC 22:27, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

More comments

First of all, it's a good article as it stands - certainly a million times better than most new articles submitted to Wikipedia - so all my comments are relatively minor issues, really.

• You have a few one sentence paragraphs. In an ideal world these would either be expanded or merged into other paragraphs.
• I agree that the acknowledgements section is out of place. I would advise you to include a 'Sources' section listing what you used to write the article and include the reference to the John Rylands library there.
• You may also like to fully reference the article so that it can be verified. I'll admit that this isn't much fun but it's not too difficult - just enclose each reference in <ref></ref> tags as they come up in the text and then include a <references/> tag where you would like the references section to show. See John Githongo for an example of this system in practice.

Congratulations on a good article. --Cherry blossom tree 00:15, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Will make those changes when time permits ... AWhiteC 01:06, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

More changes

"Thank you" to recent editors for their contributions, most have which have improved on my original article.

I have made some changes myself, and, since they interact with edits by others, here are some comments by way of justification, in the hope of avoiding edit wars!

• Added "pioneering the study of UK political institutions" back into introduction - content lost in previous edit.

• Added "He has been described as a charismatic lecturer and a very effective administrator" back into Life - content lost in previous edit.

• Changed "existing throughout history" to "past and present" - some of the government systems covered still exist!

• Made "representative assemblies" a link again. Even though it doesn't point at anything, it should do - "representative assembly" is the general term (used by Finer among others) for e.g. the U.S. Congress, the U.K. parliament, etc. Hardly an unimportant topic! Maybe I will add an article some time. "Parliament" has an article, as do other more specific terms, but the fully general term has no article - an important omission in my opinion.

• Put brackets round "e.g. Florence and Venice". The comma earlier inserted before "e.g." was confusing relative to the commas used to delimit the list that makes up that long sentance.

Please (1) be tolerant of my changes, (2) consider discussing in here before making future changes.

The best edit would one to add additional content - the article as it stands contains about all I know about Samuel Finer, which is not a lot.

AWhiteC 01:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

To Do

• Format citations as <title>. <year>. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link) AWhiteC (talk) 00:24, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Referenced

Just as a heads up, the only link under the References section appears to be broken. I've put an unreferenced tag up. Thanks, TheFireTones 12:31, 26 May 2009 (UTC)