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Template:Did you know nominations/William Swinden Barber

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Sven Manguard Wha? 08:08, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

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William Swinden Barber

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William Swinden Barber in 1864

Moved to mainspace by Storye book (talk). Self nominated at 18:20, 9 March 2014 (UTC).

  • The refs for the English Heritage listing of the 15 buildings, and for Barber's identity as architect for all 15, are all in the infobox, for your convenience. (This para was updated by Storye book on 6 April 2014) Not all of the listing refs cite Barber as architect, though. Evidence for that is cited under the article subheading for each building, and some of those newspaper citations are unlinked (due to being pay-to-view).--Storye book (talk) 18:32, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Long enough and new enough. It is extensively footnoted (although I note a dearth of sourcing for the first paragraph of "Artistic motivations" -- the one citation there does not support much of the content of the section). I have not seen indications of close paraphrasing of the sources I checked, but I am concerned that the sections about "Church of Emmanuel, Shelley, 1865–1869" and "Church of St John the Evangelist, Warley, 1877" have excessively long direct quotations from English Heritage (whose works are not, AFAIK, in the public domain). The hook appears to be true, but I cannot confirm it. Firstly, in the article, the hook appears only in the lead, where it is an unreferenced statement -- there's no place in the article text where a reader can find the basis for the hook and look it up in cited sources. Secondly, when I look at the sources for regarding individual buildings identified in the article as both designed by Barber and listed buildings, I am not consistently finding support for those two facts. I have verified that reliable sources cited in the article identify Emmanuel Shelley, St Thomas Thurstonland, and Civic Hall Brighouse as listed buildings in whose design Barber participated. For Vicarage Dudwell, I was bewildered to find that reference 1 (cited in the infobox list) is a page about Stafford Hall, Huddersfield Road, Calderdale -- no hint of "Vicarage Dudwell". The article text does indicate that the vicarage acquired that name in more recent times. However, the source cited for Barber's role in its design, the name change, and the recent building history is on rootsweb.ancestry.com, which is not a reliable source. For the building named in the article as "Causey Hall" or "Halifax Parish Church Day School," the first two cited sources (Refs 3 and 75) are about "Church School", Upper Kirkgate, Calderdale -- I found no match of nomenclature between the article and those two sources. For the property named in the article as "Church of St Peter, Huddersfield," the first-cited source is about "Parish Church of St. Peter, Kirkgate", Kirklee (not clear that this is a church in Huddersfield) and I note that the only source linking it to Barber is an offline source that appears (from its description) to be a primary source. Yes, I've described my findings for only 6 buildings, but that should be enough to show the problems I encountered. I have three recommendations:
1. Check to make sure that the article citations point to the correct sources, and revise the article so that any alternative building names and locations used by the cited sources are prominently mentioned in the article's description of the building.
2. Provide a new hook (or a couple of hook options) that can be verified in a reasonably straightforward process (without hours of research) -- and that does not rely on non-RS sources for its sourcing.
3. Resolve the concerns I noted about the under-referenced article section and the two excessive direct quotations. --Orlady (talk) 04:44, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Thank you for all the hard work you have put in on this review. I shall start work on sorting this out today - completion of the task may be next week. Please note that many of my citations for authorship of designs by Barber are in 19th century newspaper reports. I have cited the newspapers and dates, and they are online, however I could not include a url where they are pay-per-view.--Storye book (talk) 07:25, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks for following up. Please note that my concern is not the absence of URLs -- offline sources and pay-per-view sites are acceptable as sources (and many articles do provide links to pages that are behind paywalls). The "problem" is related to the painstaking research that you had to do in order to be able to say that at least fifteen of Barber's surviving structures are listed buildings. The work you did is a valuable contribution to Wikipedia. However, when Wikipedia features facts like that one, the fact is normally based on a list (or possibly multiple lists) of buildings published somewhere else, or possibly a published statement by an architectural historian. In the case of Barber, it apparently often wasn't even possible to find one source that indicated that Barber designed a particular listed building. Instead, for several buildings it seems that one source indicates that a particular building was designed by Barber, a second source indicates that the building was known by another name, and a third source indicates that the other building name was the name of a listed building. That situation creates a trail that is far too complicated to follow as the basis for a DYK. Please suggest a hook that can be more clearly connected to cited reliable sources. I think the picture could be the basis for an interesting hook along the lines of ... that architect William Swinden Barber (pictured in medieval costume) designed many 19th century churches in northern England, often in a style from the Middle Ages? However, I'm not sure that the article would currently support that statement. (I based it on this source and the indications that several of his churches were Gothic Revival buildings. However, the article does not include any sourced statements summarizing the character of his work.) --Orlady (talk) 14:46, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
  • I would be happy with a hook like the one you suggested. There are several newspaper articles (usually reporting consecration days for individual churches) which tend to say something like "designed in the style of the late/early 13th century". As I understand it, "Gothic Revival" is a term coined in more recent years, so that we must accept that "designed in the style of 13th century" and Gothic Revival architecture mean the same in the context of Barber's work. But there are no available statements summarising the character of his work, because this article is Barber's first published biography and comprehensive summary of his work. I have now improved the refs as you requested for All Saints Vicarage/Stafford Hall. I'll probably do most of the rest of the work next week (UK Mothering Sunday fatigues this weekend). --Storye book (talk) 15:07, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
  • (1) I have indicated in the header that the refs for the hook are in the infobox. (2) I have now checked and double-checked that the 15 buildings in the infobox have sufficient references to show that each is listed and that Barber made a significant contribution to the design of each of them. Only one of the buildings needs a citation to confirm that it has been renamed in the past, and there is an online citation in the infobox for that. (3) As requested I have added a reference in the paragraph on All Saints' Vicarage (now Stafford Hall), Dudwell, to confirm re-naming in the past, although the building is no longer included in the infobox and no longer relates to the DYK hook. (4) The newspaper citations confirming that Barber was the architect of the internal re-ordering of St Peter's Huddersfield are secondary sources (newspapers) and I have clarified the references. The same church is confirmed to be in Huddersfield (which is in the Kirklees district) in the first reference: just search the page for the word "Huddersfield" and you will find it in the url source for the listing description. (5) Numbers 1-4 above address all your questions, I think, except that you have asked me to remove two long quotations and write something else. I am in the process of doing this. --Storye book (talk) 18:56, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Update: Thank you, Orlady, for your painstaking review above. I have now removed long quotations from two sections and re-written those sections, fulfilling another of your requests. I have struck out those requests which I believe I have fulfilled (I hope you don't mind - it's just to make it easier for other reviewers to see what's happened). All that remains for me to do now, is to fulfil your request for an Alt 1, although the original hook is now clearly referenced in the infobox, and the reader is directed to the infobox from the header paragraph, so the original hook is OK in my opinion.--Storye book (talk) 15:45, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Alt 1: ... that architect William Swinden Barber (pictured) served in the Artists Rifles regiment? (same image as original hook) --Storye book (talk) 16:01, 6 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Alt 2: ... that architect William Swinden Barber designed the Victoria Cross (pictured) at Akroydon in 1875? --Storye book (talk) 16:14, 6 April 2014 (UTC) Victoria cross monument at Akroydon
Progress Report: I have started my review of your changes. I've made it through the first 6 listed buildings in the infobox, and so far all of them check out as verified. Based on my work so far, I can say that the Alt2 hook is verified. I believe that the hook I suggested in an earlier comment is supported, so I'm formally proposing it here:
I have not been able to verify the Alt1 hook. The source cited in the article is a book available in snippet view on Google Books, and when I search for "barber" inside that book, I get zero hits. I also don't see his name at this online article. Is there another source for this hook fact? (Note that sources need not be available online to be cited.)
To be continued. --Orlady (talk) 14:39, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
Thank you very much, Orlady, for your continued patience and efforts with this one. As always, much appreciated. I have struck out Alt 1 to save you further trouble with it (I have seen further online sources for Barber being in the Artists Rifles but cannot find them). Please choose whichever of the remaining hooks you like - it would be good to get this one wrapped up. Cheers. --Storye book (talk) 17:43, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
My apologies for not finishing this sooner. The article now meets all criteria -- it's an impressive piece of work. The original hook checks out OK (AGF only because the confirmation that Barber designed St Paul Mirfield is in an offline source). I believe the ALT3 hook is verified (and I ticked it), but someone else will need to confirm that if they want to use it. --Orlady (talk) 04:55, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
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