Talk:Hoodening

Hoodening received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

Hoodening has been listed as one of the Social sciences and society 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.
Review: July 26, 2015. (Reviewed version).

Kent GA‑class Mid‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Kent, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the county of Kent in South East England on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.KentWikipedia:WikiProject KentTemplate:WikiProject KentKent-related

GA

This article has been rated as GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

WikiProject Kent tasks:

Here are some Kent related tasks you can do:

Clean up an article: Here are automatically generated lists of articles needing cleanup sorted alphabetically and by category.
Edit the Top and High importance articles.
Refine/polish: Ashford, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Canterbury
Expand:: List of churches in Kent, Maidstone Borough Council
NPOV: K College
Citation needed: Unreferenced Kent articles
Cleanup/Copyedit: Kingdom of Kent
Expert attention: Channel Tunnel, Bromley Civic Society
Stubs: see Kent geography stubs articles

Note: These articles may overlap with those on other related lists. If you would like to make a change, either do so yourself, or make a suggestion.

England GA‑class Low‑importance

	England portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject England, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of England on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EnglandWikipedia:WikiProject EnglandTemplate:WikiProject EnglandEngland-related
GA	This article has been rated as GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Dance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Dance, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Dance and Dance-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DanceWikipedia:WikiProject DanceTemplate:WikiProject DanceDance

WikiProject Dance To-do list:

To nominate at WP:FAC:
To improve to Featured standard:
To nominate as a Good article:
To expand: 18th century dance - 20th century ballet - Bolero - Choreography on Broadway - Dance education - English ballet - Indian classical dance - Italian ballet - List of dance companies - Meg Stuart - Opera ballet - Sasha Waltz - Scotch reel - Set dance - Physically integrated dance
To cleanup: Contra dance - Salsa (dance) - Dandiya - Lead and follow
To unbias:
To check for copyvios:
To merge: List of dancers and List of dance personalities‎ as per AfD discussion
Substubs needing expansion: see /substubs
To destub: Amir Hossain Babu - Canada Dance Festival - Dance etiquette - Flash dance - more
Needing references: Chorus line - specifically verifying that each girl actually started out as a chorine
To create: Broadway dance - Country Western Dance International - Dance and cinema - Dance and society - German folk dancing - Latin swing - Post-structuralist ballet - Push (dance) - Salon dance - Shuffle dance - Swing boogie - World Dance Alliance - Xavier Le Roy - more
Wanted Pics/Graphics: Category:Dance articles needing images

GA Review

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

Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 11:02, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I always enjoy reading your articles; I'd be happy to have a look through this one. Josh Milburn (talk) 11:02, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've had a play with italics in the etymology section, as per WP:WORDSASWORDS. It's possible that I got this wrong, as it's a tricky thing, so do feel free to fix it if I've made any mistakes...
- I'm fine with those revisions, thanks Josh. Midnightblueowl (talk) 12:53, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Can I suggest "Possible Early Medieval origins" as preferable to "Early Medieval origins?"- I wonder whether the use of the question in a section title is appropriate.
- I hummed and harred in my mind over the use of the question mark, and your comment confirmed my initial concerns. I'll change it to your proposed alternative. Midnightblueowl (talk) 12:38, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Who's Percy Maylam? Folklorist?
- But I already mention who Maylam is both in the lede and in his first appearance in the main body of the article ? Midnightblueowl (talk) 12:38, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm baffled as to why I asked this... Josh Milburn (talk) 14:33, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not clear why you've combined italics with speech marks in the paragraph beginning "In their 1888 Dictionary of the Kentish Dialect".
- I think that it was probably my attempt to clarify that the authors of the dictionary were using hodening and hoodening differently, but I get your point and have removed the quotation marks. Midnightblueowl (talk) 12:53, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"or the sack in which the horse's carrier was concealed" This seems to presuppose that the people in their account wore a sack; perhaps it would be more neutral to say something like "Parish and Shaw did not mention what time of year the tradition took place on or its geographical location. They also made no reference to a the sack concealing the person carrying the horse."
- Very good point. Changed. Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:10, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"because those to whom he had talked in the early 1900s included individuals who could remember it taking place in the area of St. Nicholas-at-Wade back to the 1840s" Presumably you mean "up until the 1840s"? "Back to" would imply that it happened from the 1840s until they spoke to him.
- Actually, your interpretation was correct. Maylam noted that the tradition was still alive at St. Nicholas-at-Wade in the 1900s, with locals recalling it going back to the 1840s. I've amended the prose in the article to make that clearer. Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:33, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"However, in this he was wrong for in January 1891, letters published in The Church Times attested to the continuing practice of the hooden horse tradition at both Deal and Walmer." Is it a bit much to say he was wrong? Why not just say something like "This was contradicted by..." or something?
- Agreed and changed. Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:33, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"The members included a Mollie in their procession, but added that this had not been done for some time and was thus reintroduced for Maylam's benefit." This is the first mention in the main body of a Mollie- an explanation would be good.
- I've added a brief explanation at the first mention of the Mollie. Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:04, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Maylam talked to the troupe about the tradition, and eventually photographed the Walmer horse and those who accompanied it in March 1907." Did we not establish that he was not the photographer?
- What I had meant to relate was that Maylam had organised the photography session, even if he did not take the actual photograph himself. I have amended the prose accordingly. Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:10, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

" The Ravensbourne Morris' hoodening tradition is the earliest known variant of the custom to exist in West Kent,[57] although there are accounts of a hoodening horse being located at Balgowan School in the West Kentish town of Beckenham during the 1930s." Do these sentences not contradict each other? Or are you meaning to suggest that the latter accounts have not been verified?
- The latter part of the sentence refers to the fact that a horse was known to be kept at the school, although it wasn't necessarily used as part of any particular tradition. The entire early twentieth-century is a bit of a murky area when it comes to the hoodening tradition, but I've tried my best to describe what we know with the sources available. If you'd like me to rewrite that section then just let me know. Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:33, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be a fairly extensive discussion in Fran and Geoff Doel's 2003 Folklore of Kent, chapter 2, among their other books. If you're looking at FAC, chasing them down would probably be valuable. If you can't access the six pages in that book, I can copy them across to you.
- Thanks for the reference here, Josh. I will look into including that source at some point. Midnightblueowl (talk) 12:33, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If this article is lacking something, I feel it's just a straightforward explanation of what the practice entails. There are plenty dotted throughout the history section, but I feel readers would appreciate a simple description separate from the debates about the history.
- That's a good point and again echoes something that I had been considering. It would certainly be possible to add a single description, so I will do so, but the problem of course lies in the fact that no tradition is entirely static or uniform. As the History section notes, the different hoodening troupes did differ from one another, and did also change over time. Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:33, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  - I've added the additional section, as you suggested Josh. I think that it definitely improves the article. Midnightblueowl (talk) 12:18, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hope this is helpful. Really interesting article. Josh Milburn (talk) 13:10, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad that you found in interesting, and thank you for taking the time to review it. I'm going to be without reliable internet access for a few days, so if you don't hear from me till later in the week that will be why. If you feel that the additional paragraph is a must for the article to reach GA quality, hold off passing it until then. Otherwise I shall add the additional paragraph after it passes. Until then - all the best! Midnightblueowl (talk) 20:56, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Two quick comments on the new paragraph before I promote: First, you may want to think about putting an image next to it; this would be helpful for readers. Second, I think it's currently written with an assumption of too much knowledge on the part of the reader: rather than "The hooden horse itself was" and "The individual carrying this horse", think about something like "The practice revolved around a so-called hooden horse, which was" and "This horse was carried by an individual". I think it's fair to assume that many readers will look to this paragraph with literally no conception of what hoodening is. Josh Milburn (talk) 13:48, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Both fair points. I'm hoping that an image of the hooden horses that are used in the contemporary period will be found, and if not one could certainly be produced. I will also have a read through of that paragraph and make some alterations to ensure that things are clearer. Midnightblueowl (talk) 20:32, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Great, I'm happy to promote. A nice little article which, perhaps with some more digging through the literature, could have a shot at FA status in the future. Josh Milburn (talk) 21:27, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've placed it in the rather broad "culture and cultural studies" category, but I can see an argument for history, dance, agriculture, anthropology... I'm open to you moving it if you think there is somewhere more appropriate; I think it most clearly belongs with cultural/"folk" practices, but I'm not sure there is really a category for that. Josh Milburn (talk) 21:39, 26 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]