Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Jean Baptiste Point du Sable/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 list was not promoted by Ian Rose 17:27, 27 February 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable[edit]

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Jeremy (talk) 20:52, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have worked on this article on and off for a long time now. I think that it includes all that is known (or at least published) about this fairly enigmatic man, who is often called the founder of Chicago. It has been marked as a good article for two years and has completed a peer review. Jeremy (talk) 20:52, 21 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Image check - all OK (PD-1923, own work). Sources provided (some author info is unknown, but PD-1923 applies). GermanJoe (talk) 11:21, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done

  • Be consistent in whether you include locations for books
  • Done. I've removed the location parameter from the references that used it.—Jeremy (talk) 19:37, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Check for doubled periods caused by templates
  • FN67: page?
  • Done. I wasn't sure how best to handle this. I've used single quotes for the inner quote. Thanks, —Jeremy (talk) 19:37, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Review by Rschen7754[edit]

Placeholder; hoping to review soon. --Rschen7754 23:16, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • The lead seems a bit short for the length of the article. I know that WP:LEAD says that one paragraph is okay, but I think adding more would be beneficial. --Rschen7754 21:02, 7 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's quite a short article, so it's difficult to know what else to put in the lead; but I'll have a go.—Jeremy (talk) 16:17, 17 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Preliminary Comments from Ceranthor
Biography
  • A "biography" published in 1953 (see below) helped to popularize the commonly recited claim that he was born in 1745 in Saint-Marc in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti).[13] - see below is not typical within articles I have seen here. Why is biography in quotation marks?
  • Thanks for your review. I've never been happy calling Graham's book a biography, especially as its author acknowledges that it is largely fiction. But when I first came across it it was cited as a biography. Given that the writing style of the book is more akin to a novel, and some libraries file it under fiction, I have changed the descriptor to 'historial novel', —Jeremy (talk) 03:21, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Point du Sable married a Potawatomi woman named Catherine some time in the 1770s, they had a son named Jean and a daughter named Susanne.[14] - comma splice.
  • In a footnote to a poem titled Speech to the Western Indians, (published 1813) Arent DePeyster, - published 1813 bit disrupts the flow of the sentence. It should just be part of the prose, or omitted altogether, since it isn't really important; just a minor detail.
  • I think the date of publication is important: some sources present it as if the footnote were part of the 1779 speech. I have tried to better integrate it into the prose.—Jeremy (talk) 03:32, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • DePeyster wrote that this poem was a speech that he had made at the Indian village of Abercroche (now Harbor Springs, Michigan) on July 4, 1779.[16] - Not clear whether he refers to DePeyster or du Sable.
  • Do the changes I made for the previous comment also address this issue?—Jeremy (talk) 03:34, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • In August 1779, Point du Sable was arrested at Trail Creek by the British and imprisoned briefly at Fort Michilimackinac[19][20] on suspicion of being a spy for the United States who had helped George Rogers Clark in his capture of Vincennes.[21] - The part after "who had helped" sounds awfully specific for a "suspicion". Does the source elucidate all of this? What does the source say exactly?
    Meehan gives some background on the activities of George Rogers Clark and says that Clark was assisted by Major Godfrey de Linctot. He goes on to write "Du Sable is said to have been one of the Major's spies". However, Meehan later in the same section says "The story that Du Sable was a spy is doubtful". The primary sources (letters by the arresting officer) don't give a reason for Point du Sable being arrested, so I've removed the reason for his arrest.—Jeremy (talk) 03:54, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • which he wrote during a journey he made from Detroit across Michigan and through Illinois.[26] - The way this is written makes it sound like du Sable wrote it.
  • Heward's party stopped at Pointe du Sable's house en route to the Chicago portage - Don't think en route really needs to be italicized.
  • I've fixed both of the above issues.—Jeremy (talk) 14:17, 23 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • University of Illinois at Chicago should be linked. Same with Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis.
Theories
  • great lakes region - Capitalized and linked.
  • Link Lexington, Kentucky
Legacy
  • He is therefore widely regarded as the first permanent resident of Chicago[23][56] and given the appellation "Founder of Chicago".[8][57] - Therefore is redundant, and the "given..." part is awkward and doesn't fit with the rest of the sentence.
  • The expedition headed by Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette in 1673, though probably not the first Europeans to visit the area, are the first recorded to have crossed the Chicago Portage and travelled along the Chicago River.[58] - The expedition refers to the trip itself, not the people.
  • Explanation of who La Salle is would help.
  • At this time, few Chicagoans had even heard of Point du Sable[69] - Remove the even.

Sorry, but I don't think the prose is quite there yet. There is a lot of choppiness, and the article could use a copyedit. Sometimes the prose rushes from one topic to the next without fully explaining the idea, or it assumes that the reader knows who a person or event was. For the more obscure events it would be nice to have a concise explanation. I have to oppose for now on prose. ceranthor 23:35, 22 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Withdraw nomination. I'm not going to be able to edit much, if at all, over the next three weeks. So I'm withdrawing this nomination for now.—Jeremy (talk) 20:14, 26 February 2013 (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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