Talk:Battle of the Standard

GA Review

1. It is well written. In this respect:

• “The Battle of the Standard, sometimes called the Battle of Northallerton, in which English forces repelled a Scottish army, took place on 22 August 1138 on Cowton Moor near Northallerton in Yorkshire” is a little complicated, perhaps put “The Battle of the Standard, sometimes called the Battle of Northallerton, took place on 22 August 1138 on Cowton Moor near Northallerton in Yorkshire between the Scottish and the English”
• Also, wikilink the Scottish and the English to the respective countries (as they were at the time) if such articles exist.
• “The Scottish army were led by King David I of Scotland.” were?
• Second paragraph of lead perhaps a shade confusing
• There are other grammar problems in the article
• Other areas are well written
• We are three sub-sections into the larger “Battle of the Standard” section before we actual come to the battle, this seems a little disorganised.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable. In this respect:

• One of the most excellent references sections I’ve ever seen!
• I would suggest you find the ISBN numbers for the books you ref’d from.
• Good use of primary sources

3. It is broad in its coverage. In this respect :

• Background, lead up, battle, aftermath, its all there, good job
• littleàno irrelevant trivia

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy. In this respect:

• No NPOV issues that I can see

5. It is stable, i.e. it does not change significantly from day to day and is not the subject of ongoing edit wars. This does not apply to vandalism and protection or semi-protection as a result of vandalism, or proposals to split/merge the article content.

• Very stable, aside from recent expansion by one main user, which is okay.

6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic. In this respect:

• Good use of recent images, and the tapestry is good too, all licences seem okay.
• Are there any images from the battle, paintings, tapestries etc?

This is an unlucky article in a way, points 2->5 is passes on, and point 6 isn’t enough to hold it back, unfortunately with the issues mentioned in point one, I feel that I can’t award GA status to this article quite yet. You may think I’m being a little harsh, but the quality of GA articles is only as high as the most lenient reviewer! Good work on the article as a whole, just those few points to consider. SGGH 10:30, 23 February 2007

Made some new fixes and renominated.Cromdog 21:33, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Helpful consideration

• I think you should change all the "david"s to "King David". I was a little confused as to who David was.
• Be a little more concise considering the intro paragraph. Its a little too detailed as to what happened.

Other than these, I think what SGGH said is all true. After these suggestions, I think this article is good enough for GA status. Good friend100 17:28, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

• Added ISBN numbers of refs
• Rewrote the second paragraph of the lead
• Changed a few of the 'David's later on to make it a bit clearer

Cromdog 18:32, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I think the battle section needs an expansion. Its a little short. Good friend100 20:35, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

GA again

I was tempted to do the review on this renom, but since I have my own current nomination in the section this is living in, and another review in that section on-hold, I decided not to. However, I just made several minor changes to the article, on which I would have commented had I done the review. The new section titles I'm not too happy about, particularly under the new "prelude to battle", so regular editors should amend as necessary... just remember, don't start a section title with a preposition (so no "the", "an", or "a"), and don't repeat the article's name as a section header. I think I got the endash-hyphen-emdashes all sorted out, and I used ref names to avoid some repetitions. I think I saw some other MOS and prose stuff when I read this last night, but can't spot them now. There remain paragraphs that need citing, though. Hope this helps, when another reviewer gets here to do it properly. Carre 22:15, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

"A" and "the" are articles, not prepositions. A scholarly work in front of me now has seven sentences starting with articles on only one page. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 23:23, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, so I got the word wrong. See WP:HEAD though, which is what applies, not what you have in front of you. I give up. Carre 23:30, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is ugly for sections titles to begin with the definite article (though "a" if inspired would probably be necessary). You see, I didn't know if you meant "section header" for "sentences" or "preposition" for "article"; you see, lots of people will advise not to begin sentences with prepositions, so you'll understand it wasn't a pedantic correction. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 00:15, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you're right, and I apologise for being a touch short; I don't usually mistake my grammar terms, but it's late here... was just trying to help the article, and I know my way around MOS pretty well by now. Where I said "section header", I meant the stuff with == or === around it.. Where I said preposition, you are completely right and it should have been article, and I put it down to me being tired! Carre 00:25, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Wish I had known those tidbits about the MOS...I just came across this article through WP Military History and decided to fix up the few things that the first GA reviewer had mentioned. Since he didn't mention those MOS things, I didn't realize that was a problem...thanks for the help and tip-off.Cromdog —Preceding comment was added at 00:40, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Cromdog, this is both the strength and the weakness of GA. Depending on who you get as a reviewer, you may have an easier or a harder ride. I've seen SGGH's work in the past, and he comes out with good stuff; I, however, consider myself one of the stricter GA reviewers (but there are many who are more strict), but then I play in the FA space mostly these days. I hope that my small changes help you get through GA review without too much trouble, because this is a pretty good article as it stands; of course it can do with improvements, but that could be said of even the very best. Carre 22:49, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Second GA review

I have taken on Battle of the Standard for review under the Good Article criteria, as nominated on the Good article candidates page by Cromdog. You'll be pleased to hear that the article meets none of the quick-fail criteria, so I will shortly be conducting an in-depth review and will post the results below.

Where an article is not an outright pass, but requires relatively minor additional work to be brought up to GA standard, I will normally place it on hold - meaning that editors have around a week to address any issues raised. As a precaution to prevent failure by default should this occur, if editors are likely to be unavailable over the next ten days or so, feel free to leave a message on my talk page so we can arrange a more convenient time for review. Regards, EyeSerene^TALK 19:14, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

GA review (hold)

I have now reviewed this article under the six Good article criteria, and have commented in detail on each criterion below:

1 Well written PASS

The article is well-written; the prose flows logically and is pleasant to read, and there are no significant manual of style deficiencies (however, see 2 below). It is not currently a GA criterion, but we would recommend to editors to use the templates on WP:CITET when formatting references and citations; this ensures standardisation and allows them to be processed by bots for tasks such as tracking down dead web-page links and ISBN conversion.

2 Factual accuracy FAIL

This is the only area that needs additional work. There are a few sections of text that need in-line citations, and one or two instances of possible commentary:

Cites needed for:

• "Many of David's Norman vassals abandoned him at this point, perhaps shocked by the king's huge "barbarian" army, but more likely compromised by dual loyalty to Kings Stephen and David." (according to whom?)
• "The English knights dismounted for the battle and decided to fight on foot. A line of archers stood at the base of the English line, with the dismounted knights behind and the civil militias to either side and behind the knights." (this could also be merged with the previous paragraph, as it is rather short)
• "after their custom gave vent thrice to a yell of horrible sound, and attacked the southerns in such an onslaught that they compelled the first spearmen to forsake their post; but they were driven off again by the strength of the knights, and [the spearmen] recovered their courage and strength against the foe. And when the frailty of the Scottish lances was mocked by the denseness of iron and wood they drew their swords and attempted to contend at close quarters" (all quotations used in an article need to be explicitly cited)

Taken care of

• The entire "Aftermath" section is only cited once at the end; however this is no problem as long as that reference covers the paragraph's entire content.

It all comes from Oram, yes.

Additionally:

• There are a few sentences (such as that in my first point above) that, unless they are cited and very carefully written, will come over as editor commentary. Generally this can be avoided by either leaving them out altogether, or by sourcing and rewording to name the person that originally said/wrote that. I think (excluding the instance already noted) you have generally avoided this trap and I'll let the others pass... apart from the very last sentence of the article. This needs either removing or attributing (eg "According to X, ...") and citing.

3 Coverage PASS

The article covers its subject well, and remains focused throughout.

4 Neutrality PASS

The article is balanced and written in a neutral tone.

5 Stability PASS

The article history shows no signs of currently undergoing major changes or recent edit-warring.

6 Images PASS

All images used are appropriately captioned and bear a suitable license.

As a result of the above minor issues I have placed the article on hold. This gives editors up to a week to address the issues raised (although in some circumstances the hold period can be briefly extended). To help with tracking, editors may like to strike through each comment as it is dealt with, or use the template {{done}} after each comment.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or are ready for a re-review. In any case I'll check back here in seven days (around 26th November). All the best, EyeSerene^TALK 13:44, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

2nd GA review (fail)

Since this article has now been on hold for four weeks (including the arranged extension) and not all the issues above have been addressed, I have reluctantly failed this GA nomination. Please feel free to renominate the article at WP:GAN when ready, or to take this to WP:GAR if you feel there have been problems with my conduct of this review. Regards, EyeSerene^TALK 10:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Maps

It would be good if there were some maps in this article.

1. To show where the battle is 2. To show the border of the Kingdom before the war and 3. To show the territory eventually gained by David in the war after the battle.

I think this needs a re-think

I bumped into this, and I'm afraid I had a considerable POV issue with it, as might be expected from its narrow reference base (and my moniker, although the ancestral hut was somewhere near Heavenfield, Wall or Acomb- when Richard of Hexham speaks of the Abbey as a refuge for the poor people of the surrounding countryside, that probably includes my kin))
Viewed from the other side of the hill,

• David's campaigns may well have made a stronger Scotland, but he did so by launching slave raids into the territory of a man to whom he repeatedly promised not to do such things, and onto the doorstep of someone who had been his true man for over a decade. The chroniclers who point out the horrors are accused of Norman race hate
  • (the Life of St Ailred - they made him a saint for being a kindly old soul who tried to see good in every one - specifically notes him speaking in his native tongue Hasten fer Crist luv which doesn't look much like Norman-French to me)
  • in my copy of Lynch he describes the emotion of the chroniclers as 'shock' not 'hate'
    

and/or having an imperialist-hegemonist world view

and the vassal who renounces his homage because he chooses to defend his birthplace from arson rape and pillage rather than go along with a r & p is described as 'abandoning' David, and being 'compromised'. I think it should be possible to take a line which without going into full How Horatius Kept the Bridge mode does not merely regard Bruce's decision from the point of view of Bruce being a sad disappointment to Our Hero

• For the battle itself, there are various sources with different versions of the order of events; when the sources are systematically compared it looks to me that there has been a certain amount of pick and mix to construct a sequence casting greater lustre on the performance of the Galwegians than any of the individual sources do <br />
• Not a significant defeat because David still had an army with which he could retake the offensive, (but does not appear to have), and it didn't change anything, because he got the same terms after as he could have got before. If those are were his success criteria, surely he could have satisfied them by never crossing the Tees??? Whatever else he was after he stopped trying to get it after the Standard
  

If the sources are consulted, there were also a significant number of basic factual errors.

• Wark was linked to Wark in Tynedale, not the famous Wark-on-Tweed which is the one in question here
• David seemed to be forever seizing Carlisle despite having been given it the last time he launched an unprovoked attack
• Bamburgh never fell to David
• Thurstan did not command at the Standard

Not making the first one requires a bit of contextual understanding ("Carrum" = Carham = Wark-on-Tweed), but the last 2 undermined the article more than somewhat

Having accessed a copy of Anderson' s 'Annals', I now appreciate that pick-and-mix may be a bit unfair: many of the problems with the battle narrative arise because of Anderson's presentation of the story is itself pick-and-mix by sticking together bite-size chunks of various chronicles, which creates a number of heffalump-traps for the unwary, and weakens the cross-checking and context-checking capabilities should anyone be so old-fangled as to want to compare & contrast sources before telling the definitive tale--Rjccumbria (talk) 00:16, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

New Version posted: Work Complete ?

No of course it never is. I claim no ownership, but if people think there are errors of fact or definite POVs where there shouldn't be, please advise, perhaps not only the article but my own understanding would benefit from the correction--Rjccumbria (talk) 00:23, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Battle of the Standard/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

. Deleted or non-existent image needs attention First external link needs textural description Requires copy-edit for WP:MOS As it has been through a couple of GA reviews I would think that not too much work would allow a resubmission - though the goal posts may have moved on since last try. Keith D (talk) 22:52, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 22:52, 15 April 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 09:14, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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I think it is over-simplistic to constantly talk about "the English army" or Scotland versus England. Many English men fought against Stephen. Eustace fitz John, justiciar of Northern England and custodian of Bamburgh, and his followers fought at the battle alongside the men of Cumbria and Teviotdale on the side of King David in support of Empress Matilda. See, for example,

P. Dalton, ‘Eustace fitz John and the politics of Anglo-Norman England: the rise and survival of a twelfth-century royal servant’, Speculum, 71 (1996), 358–83

and

Eustace fitz John (d. 1157) by T. F. Tout, revised by Paul Dalton

https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/9614

Published in print: 23 September 2004

Published online: 23 September 2004

This version: 03 January 2008

Ian Hampson 03/07/2022 2A00:23C8:3B02:4E01:B05C:20F9:D4E9:839C (talk) 21:09, 3 July 2022 (UTC)