Talk:Margaret Ursula Jones

Margaret Ursula Jones has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
August 30, 2016	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on August 17, 2016.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Margaret Ursula Jones directed work at Mucking, the largest archaeological excavation ever undertaken in Britain, for thirteen years, while living on site year round in a small caravan?

Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on May 16, 2017, and May 16, 2023.

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GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Margaret Ursula Jones/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 05:02, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

First reading[edit]

Close paraphrasing

Earwig's Copyvio Detector gave high likelihood of a copyvio based on the quoted chunks of text from https://harngroup.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/margaret-jones-living-in-the-now/ but those are properly marked as quotes so this is not actually a problem. More problematic are some smaller pieces of closely phrased text:

Our article: "the largest excavation ever undertaken in the British Isles"; harngroup: "the largest area excavation ever undertaken in the British Isles"
Our article: "During the Second World War, while her husband was posted in Palestine, Jones worked as a postal censor." Guardian obituary: "During the second world war, she worked as a postal censor, while her husband was with the army in Palestine."
Our article: "Tom Jones died following a stroke in 1993. In her later years, Margaret suffered from Parkinson's disease." Guardian obituary: "Tom died in 1993 after a heavy stroke, and, in her final years, Margaret suffered from Parkinson's disease."
Our article: "archaeologists and volunteers from Britain and abroad"; http://www.thurrock-history.org.uk/mujones.htm: "archaeologists and 'volunteers' from Britain and abroad"
Our article: "Tom took the photographs and Margaret wrote accompanying articles, which they would sell to the Birmingham Mail"; Guardian "Tom with the camera, Margaret selling photos and her own journalism"; thurrock "Tom taking the photographs and Margaret marketing them and writing articles for the Birmingham Mail"; harngroup "Tom took the photos, Margaret marketed them and wrote articles for the Birmingham Mail". The fact that these sources seem to have all cribbed from each other does not excuse us for doing the same, and it also calls into question their reliability.

All of these need to be rewritten to be less similar to the sources.

Lead: Per MOS:LEAD, this adequately summarizes the rest of the article. However, the claim that she was "instrumental in the establishment of modern commercial archaeology", while footnoted in the later sections, is not adequately supported by the sources. The Guardian obit, one of the two footnotes for this claim, does not mention commercialization, and the Everill piece on commercialization, the other of the two footnotes, does not mention Jones. WP:SYNTH?; The image appears to have an adequate fair use license

Early years: "to middle class parents": neither of the two footnotes for this claim so much as mentions her parents (this is however in footnote 3, not used for this sentence).; Why is the move of Birkenhead from Cheshire to Merseyside in 1972 relevant to her birth in 1916?; "She attended Calder High School for Girls": Guardian says Calderstones. Is this name variation significant?

Freelance archaeologist: This has two footnotes, one of which (the Guardian) sources only part of the last sentence about them directing digs beginning in 1956. The other source has more but still nothing about the responsibilities of the Ministry of Works, nor about the distinction between professionals and locals.

Mucking: I have to take references [5]-[7] on good faith -- I should have subscription access to [5] and [7] but the journal's web site is temporarily broken, so I will have to try again some other time.; "for a generation of archaeologists ... 'for a generation of respectable middle-aged archaeologists'" besides the awkward repetition, looks like another instance of too-close paraphrasing.

Legacy: "which lobbied for increased government funding for rescue archaeology": not in the source.; "initiative was ultimately successful": Everill doesn't mention Jones, and mentions Rescue only in the context of a survey they published. So where does one get the information that it was her and their efforts that led to success?; "argued that her influence in the formation of modern rescue archaeology was more in her demonstrating "dogged salvage excavation on a grand scale" at Mucking, than in overt campaigning": I see no such comparison in the source.

References: Consistently formatted and all appear reliable, although I question Everill's relevance. However, reference [9] is used only to source one word, "intimidating", so I don't see why such a long pull-quote is needed from it.

—David Eppstein (talk) 06:03, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for taking the time to review the article, David. All very helpful points. I hope I've managed to address them:

Close paraphrasing – I have rewritten all the passages you flagged up. I don't think the sources are unreliable, only that there's a limited number of ways to express the small amount of biographical information available about Jones.

Lead – "commercial" is not really the operative word here, "commercial archaeology" is simply the most common way to refer to professional rescue archaeology in Britain, analogous to the use of CRM in the United States (see e.g. [1][2], I was hoping to expand and update commercial archaeology to clarify that). The source is the first paragraph of the Guardian obit.:

"She bridged the eras of amateur and modern institutional archaeology; through dogged salvage excavation on a grand scale, saving remains before sites were disturbed, her influence was quiet but profound."

I.e., she was influential in establishing "modern institutional [commercial] archaeology". However, in retrospect the word "instrumental" is overstating the case. I've changed it to "influential".

Early years – I've restored footnote 3 to the sentence about her family background & remove the mention of Cheshire. According to our article Calderstones School (which is sourced), the school wasn't named such until after 1967, when the boys' Quarry Bank High School merged with Calder High School for Girls, so I assumed Pitts was actually referring to the latter.

Freelance archaeologist – I've removed the reference to volunteers as I don't have a source for it to hand. The information on the Ministry of Works' additional responsibility for Ancient Monuments is taken from our article on Ministry of Works, to give some context to why Jones, an archaeologist, worked for the government department in charge of building projects.

Mucking – I've changed the awkward wording.

Legacy – this is largely citations getting mixed up again, my apologies. The source for the statement about Rescue's purpose is Everill (p. 159). The following sentence is also a summary of Everill, who states that "For a number of years RESCUE was successful and these subsidies were increased", and that PPG16 was created to fill the gap after that funding regime was folded up. My intention wasn't imply Jones had a personal role in seeing this come to pass, only that it was a legacy of an organisation she helped to create.

The source for the statement that Jones' campaigning was not that significant is Pitts—"[Jones] she shunned the high-profile demands of protest. However, she was just as determined to counter the threat to heritage..."—who is also quoted as saying she was influential nevertheless (as discussed for the lead). I thought the connection between the two was obvious, but do you think it's too synthy?

References – I've made the long extract an illustrative quote in the Legacy section, which was what it was intended for.

―Joe Roe (talk) 11:45, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Issues with unsourced background material in the "Freelance archaeologist" section remain unaddressed. You comment that you removed something but I see no changes to this section.

In the legacy section, the same sentence that you quote as suggesting that she wasn't political also says "Margaret was of a more politically-minded generation". But it is the comparison between her political and excavation activities, rather than whether she was or was not political in some absolute sense, that I think is too synthy.

—David Eppstein (talk) 06:21, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, my mistake – I've removed it now. I've also added a source for the background info on the Ministry of Works' role in early rescue archaeology, and rephrased the statement in the legacy section to (hopefully) remove any synth. Thanks. Joe Roe (talk) 19:40, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Second reading[edit]

1a. Prose is consistently of good quality: Yes.
1b. Lead summarizes article; overall layout and style conforms to MOS: Yes.
2b. Referenced and the references are appropriately formatted: Yes. The one book reference does not have page numbers for its citations, but that's ok as it's used more as a general reference for the Mucking excavation, which is the main topic of the book. The references appear to all be consistently formatted in Citation Style 1.
2c. No original research: Yes, after revisions.
2d. No copyvio or plagiarism: Yes, after revisions.
3a. Addresses main aspects of topic: Yes.
3b. No unnecessary detail: Yes.
4. Neutral: Yes.
5. Stable: Yes.
6a. Image has valid fair use rationale: Yes.
6b. Image is relevant and suitably captioned: Yes.

I'm going to go ahead and pass this, as I believe it meets all the Good Article criteria. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:44, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for the review, David. I think the article is much better for it and I'm thrilled to have my first GA! Joe Roe (talk) 02:24, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]