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Revision as of 12:49, 19 June 2006

Martin Luther

This article is a perfect example of a well written, comprehensible, and neutral article. It incorporates quotations and pictures smoothly into the text, and provides refrences for everything. It is an of an appropriate length, yet still gives all the information that is required. It also complies with the style manual, and has an appropriate table of contents length. Overall, this article is informative, neutral, and very well written. Thetruthbelow 16:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

NOTE: This article has 51KB of prose as of 15 June 2006. See Misplaced Pages:Summary style. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maveric149 (talk • contribs)

• Support Sounds good to me. Ptmccain 16:51, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program.
  • Per WP:WIAFA, Images should have concise captions.
  • There may be an applicable infobox for this article. For example, see Template:Infobox Biography, Template:Infobox School, or Template:Infobox City.

Done --CTSWyneken 02:10, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

• • Per WP:MOS#Headings, headings generally do not start with the word "The". For example, ==The Biography== would be changed to ==Biography==.

Done, removed all "The" articles from subheadings.Ptmccain 19:47, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

• • Please alphabetize the categories and interlanguage links.

Done--CTSWyneken 00:30, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

• • Per WP:WIAFA, this article's table of contents (ToC) maybe too long- consider shrinking it down by merging short sections or using a proper system of daughter pages as per WP:SS.
  • This article may need to undergo summary style, where a series of appropriate subpages are used. For example, if the article is United States, than an appropriate subpage would be History of the United States, such that a summary of the subpage exists on the mother article, while the subpage goes into more detail.
  • As is done in WP:FOOTNOTE, for footnotes, the footnote should be located right after the punctuation mark, such that there is no space inbetween. For example, change blah blah . to blah blah.

Done--CTSWyneken 11:02, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

• • Please ensure that the article has gone through a thorough copyediting so that the it exemplifies some of Misplaced Pages's best work. See also User:Tony1/How to satisfy Criterion 2a.
  • You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas.
  • Thanks, Andy _t 00:48, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

• Support Very well written, very informative, long, inline citations included. (Wikimachine 01:21, 16 June 2006 (UTC))

• Support, provisionally. It's mostly well written—congrats. But you could get someone else to go through it and polish it. Here's a snake that needs to be chopped up: "Luther was born to Hans and Margarethe Luther, née Ziegler , on 10 November 1483, in Eisleben, Germany, and was baptized the next day, on the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, after whom he was named." Seven commas, too.

Done by Ptmccain. --CTSWyneken 19:30, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

A few random problems I spotted at the top:

• • Influenced the doctrine and culture of traditions—category problem.
  • "can not"—this should be "cannot"; it's a translation of a quote, so it can be fixed.
  • "His family moved to Mansfeld in 1484, where his father first worked in, then operated, copper mines." Did he work in and then operate every day? It's just a little unclear, but it's a minor point.
  • "Having risen from the peasantry, Hans Luther was determined to see his eldest son serve as a lawyer." I'd be happier not implying that lawyers serve anyone but themselves. What about "become a lawyer"?

Done by Ptmccain. --CTSWyneken 19:44, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

• • "In this way, Martin would bring further honor to the family. "Further"?
  • "... sent to schools in Mansfeld and Magdeburg, where he attended a school.... He then attended school in Eisenach." Can you avoid the repetition?

I'm concerned that most readers won't realise that a "hymn" is just the words; the sentence talks of congregational singing. Did Luther write the music too? (I think that he did, so this could be explicit—it's unexpected that he should have been a composer as well.)

The "Early life" section is short, and comprises three paragraphs, two of which are stubby. Can you do a structural audit of the whole text to ensure optimal cohesion and flow? Tony 10:43, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

• Support, with work for us to do yet, per Tony and the 'bot. --CTSWyneken 11:23, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

• Support a well-written article and not a vandal's target. (unlike the Diet of Worms article) Anonymous__Anonymous 11:58, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

• Suppport, with reservations. Well written and supported, but I find it hard to understand Luther without more context. The article has a brief mention of Zwingli and a few other contemporary dissenters, but no disucssion of prior dissenters. It notes actions of certain anabaptists and has him reacting to their radicalism without any explication of the substance of the dispute (was it just the violence or was there any substance or social explanation?). Similarly, the article doesn't mention Calvin at all, and has no substantive discussion of the Counter-Reformation and the reaction to his work, yet the Calvinist and Catholic reactions to Luther are among the most important topics in European history. I think a "legacy" or "influence" section and an "historical background" or "context" discussion would be useful, even if they are short and primarily create bridges to other articles. This is an excellent biography as such, but doesn't take full advantage of Misplaced Pages's ability to weave an article about an isolated topic into the whole. Still, worthy of FA status. Sam 13:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
• Support. This article has been written through the joint effort of many Wikipedians, and represents the "blood, sweat, and tears" that go into making this the best online source of encyclopedic information on the web.--Drboisclair 02:02, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

• Sorry to appear to be high-handed, but at a later stage, I'll not want to be able to pick out problem sentences at random. If that is still possible, I'll change to Object. This is what my eyes first came across:

"Soon terms like penance and righteousness took on new meaning for Luther, and he became convinced that the Church had lost sight of several of the central truths of Christianity taught in Scripture — the most important of them being the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Luther began to teach that salvation is completely a gift of God's grace through Christ received by faith alone. "

• • Perhaps it's a stylistic matter, but many writers would agree that "Soon, terms such as ..." is preferable at the start.
  • If they "took on a new meaning", why not tell us more about it; this appears to be important to understanding the man, yet it's vague. Is the text largely copied from another source? (I don't mean to accuse; I'm just trying to determine the circumstances of the writing of the text—it may help us to improve it.)
  • "in Scripture"—I suppose that we need the upper-case S (do we?), but why is it "the Scriptures" above? Consider using the same terminology.
  • There are a few instances of "began to ..." that I don't like; it indicates a starting point, and begs for a year. It also begs the question of whether this new state of affairs continued right through his life. Better wording required?

So there's serious work to do before this is "compelling, even brilliant" prose. Tony 10:19, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Comment: thanks, Tony! Your comments are appreciated. When time permits, if no one gets there first, I'll tend to your points. --CTSWyneken 10:53, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

• Support Nicely written, lots of references. Looks good to me. NuncAutNunquam 00:38, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
• Object. ToC is rather long and should be more then one level (use 2nd and 3rd level headings). No references: notes should be retitled references and bibliography further reading. See also is very long, merge with text and remove section.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 05:02, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

  Please Note The Notes section has been renamed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thetruthbelow (talk • contribs)

Comment: Thanks of the suggestions, Piotrus! We've been struggling with the TOC since yesterday and will keep in mind your suggestion for subsections. Do you have a page that fits your criteria that you'd recommend we study? --CTSWyneken 10:41, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose – A> needs to be written in sumamry form. B> ToC placement is odd C> Images squeeze the text in between, reduce the presence of so many images. D> Heading not according to MoS: Monastic and Academic Life -->: Monastic and academic life E> Left aligned images cause the headings to be pushed to the right. =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:46, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
• Object; summary style please. And use subsections, not level two sections for everything. The TOC is huge, and poorly placed. Some sections are short and need to be merged into other sections (Small and Large Catechisms, Peasants' War, Theology of Grace, etc.). The supplementary sections (starting with the inexplicable "Bibliography" section) are extremely non-standard. Also, images per Nichalp (some people still use 800x600). --Spangineer (háblame) 12:49, 19 June 2006 (UTC)