Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Habsburg Spain/archive1

Habsburg Spain

just a good-looking article I stumbled accross. dab 13:38, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Support: I think this is one of the best pages I have read on Wikipedia. Factual, accurate, well illustrated and well written. Giano 13:48, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Very reluctantly object. No references and some minor touches of POV (i.e. 'intrepid'). Perhaps too many pictures. Otherwise, I second Giano. This is...brilliant. Ambi 14:05, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Absolute support. This is a tour de force. I don't personally mind that it is so long. Object. No references. Was all this information written out of thin air with no look at any authoritative references or primary sources? Adding them now is dishonest unless they are actually used to add, confirm, and cite the material in the article. - Taxman 17:27, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

Excellent addition of the references you used, much better than I could have hoped for, but please do continue to cite specific facts that may be contentious. For inline citations I prefer (Parker, 1972, pg 22-23) or similar, though unfortunately it seems there is no consensus on style for that. - Taxman 14:00, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

Object. First, the "lead" jumps right into the story. In the next section, Ferdinand is "sent packing" and young Charles is introduced. When they "return" it is not clear that it is the same twosome. Many other awkward passages follow.Sfahey 17:33, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Object. Sfahey and Taxman already mentioned problems with references and the lead section, and I agree with these. In addition: 1) The term "Habsburg Spain" only appears in the title of this article, and it is not clear from the lead section, nor the article, what "Habsburg" means (I know, but the average reader may not). 2) Some of the passages dealing with the revolt in Netherlands seem a bit simplistic and hence not fully correct. I suspect similar things may be true for other parts of the article. 3) The lead section makes a brief references to "cultural efflorescence", but the article does not go into detail on this topic. 4) The article is mostly chronological, but some sections cover the entire period, and would probably best be moved to the bottom, clearly separating them from the history sections. 5) The years in the titles of the sections are misleading. For example, "The trouble with the Dutch (1571-1598)" suggests the trouble ended in 1598, but the Eighty Years' War continued until 1648. Jeronimo 22:05, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The errors in the article are mine alone, so, I apologize. I added my sources for the original article (the list is quite exhaustive of those I used) at the end of the page. The fact that they were missing in the first place was a gross oversight, and again I apologize. I will go over and place direct citations where I can, though I am not so sure where I need to; there are some quotes from Olivares that I will cite, and some statistics in the later sections for which I will do the same. In dealing with the Dutch revolt, I in fact began with a longer explanation of the war's causes, but someone else pointed out to me that this was a history of Spain rather than the Eighty Years' War, and so I was advised to pare it down, with which I mostly agree. The cultural aspect of the period is left out intentionally; as stated in the introductory paragraph, "For information on Spanish art and culture in the period, see Spanish Golden Age," as the Dutch article divides the Dutch Golden Age from the main social/political history, though perhaps an overview would be appropriate in this article. "The trouble with the Dutch" has been retitled, though somewhat regretfully, since I thought it was a rather catchy title. At any rate, thank you for noticing the article; I had been hoping that some people would come hash through my habitually atrocious POV problems, so the attention might help improve its quality. Adam Faanes 05:02, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I see the note to see Spanish Golden Age, but it seems to me at least that some of that should be summarized in this article. It doesn't need to cover every detail, but all of the important topics should at least be summarized, with a link to Spanish Golden Age as the main article. - Taxman 14:00, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the references. However, most of my objections still remain. I'll see if I can fix some of the inaccuracies I spotted. Jeronimo 18:21, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A summary on Spanish art and culture has been added and ==The Last Habsburg== has been put where it should be. I'll help tear through the main article for NPOV tomorrow. The question is now whether or not 55 KB is too long. Adam Faanes 03:07, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Object for now. This is a good article, but not quite there yet. I think the coverage is adequate for an encyclopeadia article, but the writing needs editing for style (for instance, the work Spain appears 8 times in the lead section) and POV. Supprised not to find Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II among the references. Filiocht 08:56, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
Comment maybe it was premature to nominate the article. But I still think it a remarkable feat of Adam's to quietly produce such a piece in just a couple of edits. Also, it seems our FA standards are rising all the time. I have seen FAs decidedly below the quality of this one. Anyway, I do not apologize for having drawn attention to this article, and I am sure it will be FA worthy by any standard pretty soon. dab 09:22, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but most of those articles were promoted before the FAC process, so comparison to their substandard quality for the purposes of current nominations isn't relevant. See Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates and that talk page for efforts to make sure all FA's meet the same basic standards. In any case, of course no apologies necessary for noticing and listing a mostly great article. - Taxman 14:00, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)
Comment: I believe this was nevertheless a good nomination, as attention has been drawn to the article's potential. It is already improving, and reads better as it goes along. I tried to explain how Spain "became" Habsburg, which was missing in the original. Several sections however still go into into excess detail on events in Europe that go far beyond "Hapsburg Spain". Sfahey 00:53, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Abstain. It has great potential and I hope to be able to support it soon after above objections has been adressed. Please note ATM it is 44kb long, and probably needs to be split into subarticles. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:20, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Support, and this article is not too long at 44 kb. On the issue of length and splitting up a good linear article of this size into subarticles, please see the many cogent arguments made against such a procedure w r t John Vanbrugh, on this page recently, and also see the FAC talk page discussion which was sparked by it.--[[User:Bishonen|Bishonen (talk)]] 20:03, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Support--ZayZayEM 13:13, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Support. The page is quite long and could do with maybe splitting out a little detail into subarticles, and it seems a little weak on "people's history", but nevertheless it's very good. Everyking 14:35, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The article is getting better every day, but I think it IS too long because of the amount of material which is not about "Habsburg Spain". For example, more than 3/4ths of "An Emperor and a King" is not about Spain at all. Sure, we have to know something about what was going on in Charles' mind, but this is excessive. I condensed a lot of extraneous material in some other sections, but don't know enough about these years to do the same effectively.Sfahey 21:38, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've amended some portions of the article for the items you've mentioned; I don't know what quite made me digress to talking about Thomas Muntzer in the first place, really. I tried to clarify exactly how the conflicts in Germany related to Spain. I also added back in some information about the Italian wars that got edited away in the process; I think that adding just a touch of military history adds some flavor to the history that makes it more engaging. Adam Faanes 13:07, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Support, though the article is constantly improving. Fernand Braudel's book needs to be incorporated into the text too, not just listed in References. Subsections in these massive articles essentially break them down into the short sub-articles that a few people seem to desire. No point in breaking up context for the rest of us, IMO. I think this is an outstanding example for Wikipedia, the essence of a Featured Article. --Wetman 03:11, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Object. The opening section needs a lot of work. It should introduce the subject and article. Also, the article may have too many pictures (I counted 43). And the captions for the pictures could be improved, in many cases. That said, I am impressed by this article and look anticipate it will become a featured article once the objections here raised are addressed. Jacob1207 21:48, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I made minor changes in the "lead", which looks O.K. to me, and buffed up a caption or two. I still see the main problem here is the huge amount of material dealing with Charles I's activities as H.R.E Charles V, which I don't think have much relevance to "Habsburg Spain".Sfahey 22:41, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)