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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Frank Pick/archive1

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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 by GrahamColm 22:16, 7 November 2012 [1].

Frank Pick edit

Frank Pick (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): DavidCane (talk) 00:08, 3 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Frank Pick was involved in the management of the London Underground from 1906 to 1940 and was the chief executive of London Transport between 1933 and 1940. Pick had a strong interest in design and his support for this through the art and architecture he commissioned and the brand he developed led to him being described in 1968, a quarter of a century after his death, as "the greatest patron of the arts whom this century has so far produced in England, and indeed the ideal patron of our age." His interest in urban planning and his impact on the growth of London between the world wars has seen him likened to Baron Haussmann and Robert Moses. DavidCane (talk) 00:08, 3 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Image review - File:Tube_map_1908-2.jpg needs evidence of reasonable search for author identity, per the licensing tag used. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:35, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This image appears on three featured articles and a featured list already and was discussed during the Albert Stanley, 1st Baron Ashfield FAC (see the comments here about three-quarters of the way down). The artist would have been a house artist in the UERL's publicity department. Also, the map appears in Christian Wolmar's book The Subterranean Railway. Tellingly, the book provides copyright notices for most of the illustrations used, but nothing for this one.--DavidCane (talk) 23:18, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Review by Lemurbaby

  • The lead is short relative to the size of the article and doesn't appear to summarize all the key points.
  • Image captions don't need periods when they are not complete sentences (several instances of this)
  • "The lower than expected passenger numbers were partly due to competition" - long sentence is a bit confusing
  • "the company's railway lines; tripling the number..." ; --> ,
  • "run as far as Tooting. but Pick " - copyedit
  • "a common advertising policy; improving the appearance" - ; --> ,
  • "which was only available for a short time, Pick did not have time" - can you find another word than time?
    • Amended "short time" to "limited period".--DavidCane (talk) 23:08, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "all rail operators in the area; increasing those" ; --> ,
  • "government backed loans; this time through the" ; --> ,
  • "modern not garbled classic or Renaissance" - needs comma after modern
    • That is how the quote is punctuated. --DavidCane (talk) 23:08, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "new type of station for the more open sites of the stations" - can you find another word than station?
  • "all of the possible equipment and signage that might be wanted" - a little unclear, wanted by whom or what?
    • I've changed this the "needed". It might be the LPTB, the local council or the people responsible for traffic signage.--DavidCane (talk) 23:08, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "At the beginning of the 1920s with its vehicle numbers" - revise this sentence - it needs a comma or, even better, restructuring to remove the initial "its"
    • Comma added. The "its" can just be removed I think.--DavidCane (talk) 23:08, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "instigated a rationalisation of services" - initiated? introduced?
  • "During 1938 and 1939, with war anticipated,..." the first several sentences in this paragraph are all very similarly structured, and that jumps out at me when I'm reading it. I'd recommend restructuring some of these sentences to diversify
  • "led to his involvement with the..." - involvement in?
  • "lecturing on the subject; giving talks" ; --> ,
  • "an area of design he became interested" - interested in? rephrase
  • "1930s when he outline " - outlined
  • "Board of Trade... Board of Trade..." used a piped link for the second one (just show "President")
  • "for 1931/32" - 1931 to 1932
    • I've used an oblique in accordance with WP:SLASH because the appointment was for 12 months from 1 October 1931 to 30 September 1932. I avoided using "1931 to 1932" as it could be a period of from a few weeks to up to two years.--DavidCane (talk) 23:08, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Pick had not been well for some years." - vague, the reader needs some sense of the time frame here.
  • "countries." and that - punctuation
  • "In his will he bequeathed a painting, Ely, by Francis Dodd to the Tate Gallery." - reads with difficulty, try: In his will he bequeathed a Francis Dodd painting..."

- Lemurbaby (talk) 05:17, 13 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support - all my concerns have been adequately addressed. Lemurbaby (talk) 06:49, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments This is a very good quality article on an interesting man. I have the following comments and suggestions.

  • It seems a bit unusual to list a bachelor (or honours?)-level degree after someone's name in the lead of an article.
    • OK. I have removed the LLB. I think it is worth keeping the Honorary membership of the RIBA as this is something bestowed rather than earned.--DavidCane (talk) 01:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd suggest merging the second and third paras of the lead (which are short and flow into each other nicely)
  • "to apply to be admitted to practice" - I'd suggest rephrasing this to cut down on the number of times 'to' is used
  • Can more be said about how Pick developed the UNDERGROUND brand and other aspects of the systems style? This para is a bit short for such an important topic.
    • The term "Underground" had been in use informally for the various underground railways in London and "Tube" was used commonly from 1900 when the Central London Railway began to advertise itself as the "Twopenny Tube", but there is not much in any of the sources on how they arrived at the exact form of word used from 1908 with the enlarged U and D. Other aspects of the corporate identity ("bulls-eye" and "typeface") are dealt with in the following paragraphs of this section.--DavidCane (talk) 01:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "its control over transport services in London through the purchase" - 'through the purchase' is a bit passive - how about 'by purchasing' or similar?
    • Done. I seem to write in the passive voice a lot.--DavidCane (talk) 01:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Permitted schemes put on hold" - this is a bit awkward, as it's not clear what a 'permitted scheme is'. How about 'Schemes which had been approved, but put on hold during the war'... or similar?
    • OK. I have change "permitted" to "approved".--DavidCane (talk) 01:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Finance for the latter two extensions was obtained under the support" - 'under the support' is a bit passive and unclear. Could this be replaced with 'through' or equivalent?
  • "with plans for the C&SLR extension developing" - I think that 'under development' would work better than 'developing'
  • "and quicker to use" - this is a bit awkward. Could this be replaced with 'and efficient to use'? (or just 'and efficient')
    • OK. The nature of the efficiency improvement is covered later in the sentence.--DavidCane (talk) 01:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Pick had become joint managing director of the Underground Group in 1928" this should be noted earlier in the article, as by the time I reached this I was wondering what Pick's role was given the range of things he was doing.
    • I realised that this was a rather late introduction of this fact, but I couldn't find a comfortable place to insert it earlier in the article as the preceding sections deal with specific aspects of his activities and it broke the flow of the sections. I'll have another look, but I don't think that it has too much relevance earlier on.--DavidCane (talk) 01:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • That's a good point. I'd suggest adding prior to or at the start of the paragraph which begins with "Pick wanted a new type of building for the more open sites of the stations on the Piccadilly line's extensions." (but even then you'll need to play with the wording a bit). Nick-D (talk) 09:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • I've played around with different formulations, but I can't find one that fits naturally here without, to my eyes, it feeling like an intrusion on the flow.--DavidCane (talk) 23:02, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • OK, fair enough - I wasn't able to think of a way to make it fit neatly either. Nick-D (talk) 08:17, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given Pick appears, at least to modern eyes, to have had a very 'hands on' management style, do any sources discuss whether his focus on small details came at the cost of attention to the big picture or other aspects of his high ranking job? How did his staff view these interventions into matters which more junior managers would have had primary carriage over?
    • I'll see if I can find something specific on this in Barman. He was one of Pick's junior managers and just seems to indicate that it was accepted - probably because Pick ran the show and had very much formed the organisation in his own image. There is an interesting section where Barman outlines a typical week for Pick, showing that he was very much a workaholic - working almost a seven-day week. He is described a couple of times as a virtual dictator or benevolent dictator - see the Holden quote on the operation of his meetings.--DavidCane (talk) 01:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Outlining an average week in Pick's life would be a great addition to the article. I found that this kind of detail worked well when I developed the John Treloar (museum administrator) article (which also covers a workaholic of roughly this period). Nick-D (talk) 09:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Pick was considered by many of its members to be achieving the organisation's aims" - this hardly seems surprising given that he helped to found it! I'd suggest tweaking this wording.
  • "Initially scheduled for 30 September 1938, these were cancelled when Neville Chamberlain's Munich conference with Adolf Hitler averted war that year, but were activated a year later at the beginning of September 1939 on the declaration of war with Germany" - the subject of this sentence could be made more explicit (I'd suggest adding 'plans' after the first 'these')
  • Do we know anything about Pick's political views? The final para of the 'Personality' section suggests that he was left-leaning (also, can more be said about what his contribution to the Moscow Metro involved?).
    • He does not appear to have been overtly political, but he definitely had a very strong social conscience and many of his ideas were aimed towards the general betterment of society. I think that this was more the result of his strongly moral and religious upbringing and the philosophical influences of the writers he admired, than a political agenda so I'm not sure that this can be directly interpreted as left-leaning or socialist. Perhaps I will try to list out some of the writers and works that influenced him.--DavidCane (talk) 01:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Little explanation of what he did for the Moscow Metro is provided in the sources - I think it was in the facilitation of an exchange of information and ideas. Wolmar just makes a single mention in a sentence where he comments that Pick met both Stalin and Hitler. Barman just says that some of the Underground's designers had been in Russia when the Metro was being planned and that "the Russians had learnt a great deal from their visits to London's Underground". The award seems to have been given to Pick as the CEO of the LPTB.--DavidCane (talk) 01:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • More detail on that would be great. Nick-D (talk) 09:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support My comments have now largely been addressed. Extra material on Pick's relationship with the Moscow Metro would be good per the above point, but it's not a barrier to the promotion of this fine article. Nick-D (talk) 08:17, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • I forgot that one. I'll see what I can find.--DavidCane (talk) 17:14, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose based on prose and research. Kolob1x2 (talk) 21:53, 31 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • What are the problems with the prose and research? Drive by opposes such as this which don't give the nominator anything to respond to are bad form, and aren't given a lot of weight by the FA delegates. Nick-D (talk) 09:07, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • No weight at all, in fact -- objections need to be specific and actionable. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:55, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Kolob1x2, unless you can explain what you think needs to be fixed, I can't do much.--DavidCane (talk) 22:43, 2 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - The article is charming, and was a pleasant read. The footnotes are extremely helpful; thanks for those. I admire the headers because they give the article a certain style, but I have to question whether or not they are encyclopedic. I don't know if we have a specific guideline prohibiting them but they strike me as textbookish. Not sure though, so feel free to ignore my niggling criticism.
From "Early life"
Before becoming a draper, Pick's father had had an ambition to become a lawyer and he encouraged his son to follow this career.[5] He attended - I think you mean Frank Pick by "He", but it's unclear from the structure.
The first "he" is Francis Pick, the father; the second was Frank Pick. I've changed the second to "Pick", to clarify a bit.--DavidCane (talk) 13:12, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent article. ceranthor 03:15, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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