Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

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 22:39, 13 June 2007.

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

Not the longest article going but a comprehensive look at Joseph Wright of Derby's most famous painting. Hope you like it. Yomanganitalk 14:06, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support. I liked it very much. It made me repeatedly look at the picture and brought it to life splendidly. The length is fine, because an article about one painting shouldn't be too long. My comments at the peer review were professionally addressed. qp10qp 21:41, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I need to read this in more detail before I can decide whether I support the article, but I just wanted commend the nominator for choosing a relatively uncommon and interesting subject. - Mgm|(talk) 09:20, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support..gosh. Prose is well done; only tiny quibble is that a cockatoo is not a species as such so I'd replace the word 'species' with plain 'bird' in:
The cockatoo would have been rare at the time, as the species did not become well-known
but this is not a deal-breaker. cheers, Cas Liber | talk | contribs 11:55, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fair point. Fixed Yomanganitalk 12:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support; a good, to-the-point read. -- Phoenix2 (holla) 20:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. It's really a shame that we don't have a higher-quality image of the painting. I considered paying for a hi-res file from the National Gallery website (under the semi-legitimate pretense of using it for a lecture, which I probably would do as some point), but the U.K. doesn't have any equivalent of Bridgeman v. Corel. I have a photo of the mezzotint of the composition from when it was recently on display in New Haven, but unfortunately it was behind glass and I couldn't get one that wasn't ruined by reflections. Hopefully at some point, a good image of that will be another improvement to the article.--ragesoss 03:13, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Unfortunately the National Gallery has the only image that is light enough to show the details in the background. Volume II of Nicholson's book has a fairly good reproduction but it is in greyscale and folds out (so is ruined by a crease), and all the other illustrations I've come across have been tiny and/or very dark. I've added a link to the National Gallery's online zoomable version which is about as good as you can get without going and standing in front of it. Yomanganitalk 12:02, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Absolutely fascinating, well written and sourced, and quite unique. I've never heard of the painting before, but I've found a respect for it after reading this article, which properly displays this painting's significance in not only art but science, as well. Very good work! María (habla conmigo) 13:46, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is a lovely piece, Yomangani. I recall you've posted that you want to test the bottom size range of FA, and this is a great example of a short FA-quality article. Could you derive two or three summative sentences from Reception and add it to the lead? I know the infobox tells us it's at the National Gallery, but I like to imagine the lead as if no infobox exists. Few wikilinks—that's fine, because we link too often. For something like this, I'd only say that natural science info that directly relates to the subject ought to be linked (e.g. link air pressure but not magnetism). Your description of the invention of the air pump is now far better than on the main air pump article, incidentally. Might want to tweak Historical background and post it on the science page. Finally, you have yet to discover the beauty of the serial comma. One can't oppose on that basis, but let me tell you that once you turn to the dark side you will never look back ;). Marskell 21:24, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    It's hard to pull much out of the reception section without getting bogged down in details. I've added a sentence, but I don't really want to retrace its provenance or repeat (or rather "prepeat") its reviews. By the way, there is no beauty to the serial comma and, if you think this article is short, I've got three more coming that at the moment are only just longer than this when combined. Yomanganitalk 22:34, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Fascinating, well-written and illustrated article on a non-mainline subjects. Few quibbles/suggestions:
  1. Can the size of the painting be mentioned somewhere in the text ? I was looking for this information, but found it in the infobox only after I had read through the article.
    Done.Yomanganitalk
  2. The Style section refers to a man "timing the experiment" (I guess the man in the right left foreground  ?), but the Details section does not refer to him as such.
    I was trying not to break the flow too much, but hopefully I've made it clearer by splitting the description across the two sections now.Yomanganitalk
  3. I was confused by these sentences, "The single source of light is obscured behind the bowl on the table; some hint of a lamp glass can be seen around the side of the bowl, but David Hockney has suggested that the bowl may contain sulphur, giving a powerful single light source that a candle or oil lamp would not." since I found it difficult to keep the bowl, lamp glass and the "large liquid-filled glass jar" in order. My guess is that bowl=jar, while the sulphur is in the lamp glass rather than the skull container. If that is the case, perhaps use of consistent terminology will make it easier to decipher the description.
    First guess was right, second guess was wrong. Hopefully made that clearer too. Yomanganitalk 23:24, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Finally, should Lunar Society be wikilinked on first, rather than second use ?
    Yes, that's what comes of rearranging sections. Well spotted. Yomanganitalk 23:24, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Abecedare 22:41, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Would it be possible to reword a sentence in the Style section to include a mention of the Hockney-Falco thesis? A one-link "See also" section just looks tacky. ShadowHalo
    Try that. I was never keen on the single see also, but it is a bit cumbersome to insert mid flow. Yomanganitalk 00:27, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Works for me. Support. ShadowHalo 00:30, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support plus! This is a cool article. It should be a TFA as well. This would be a great main page article. As a minor fix, though, consider playing with the image placement a bit. There are some places that (on my monitor resolution) some of the left-aligned images are clashing with headers and the like. Consider alternating or changing image locations so as to avoid having left aligned images near the tops or bottoms of sections to avoid this problem. Its a minor issue, but some small asthectic fixes could improve readability a tad.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 03:23, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    I've rearranged it closer to my original "column" layout and tried it on a few resolutions. Seems better now, but let me know if you still have problems. Yomanganitalk 17:32, 11 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - brilliant article. More like this, please! Carcharoth 00:35, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. 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.
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