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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 by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 19 March 2025 [1].

Alison Frantz

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Nominator(s): UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:54, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about Alison Frantz, archaeologist and photographer of classical Greece. If you've seen a photograph of an ancient Greek artwork in a 20th-century book, there's a good chance it was one of hers. She also helped to reconstruct the only Byzantine building still standing in the Agora of Athens, played an important role in the decipherment of Linear B, and had an interesting and only-recently-uncovered turn as a spy during the Second World War.

Despite Frantz's Scottish ancestry, the article is written in Americanese, of which I am not a native speaker. It received a GA review a little while ago from Z1720, and Choliamb has also contributed useful adjustments and feedback. The remaining howlers are my own. UndercoverClassicist T·C 14:54, 25 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • File:Edward_Capps.png: why is this believed to be a US government work?
    • Hm -- no good reason that I can see; the Red Cross isn't a government agency (though I wonder if the original uploader thought it was). The LoC link doesn't help much, but I've swapped it for tags based on the 1920 date (it was on a flyer of some sort with the caption that you can see in the source page, which I think counts as "publication".) UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:38, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
      • What's the author's date of death? Nikkimaria (talk) 04:41, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
        Credited to "ARC Paris Office" (ARC is, I assume, "American Red Cross"), so the copyright status does depend on its having been published. I did track down the LoC page, here, which says they don't think it has any restrictions on publication, but then are a bit unclear about whether that actually means they're PD. They do have a (long) list of all the known photographers, and I suppose we could simply find out when the last of them died, but then it would probably be a "work for hire" in any case. I think it's going to be simpler to remove it. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:31, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
        I struggled to find a good swap here (I really wanted a picture of OSS agents at work, but for obvious reasons there aren't a whole lot of those). Eventually went for a useful archaeological one with File:Plan Agora of Athens Roman colored.svg. The dates between the coloured version and the non-coloured one don't quite agree: I need to do a bit of digging to see which is best (though I suspect that the eventual answer will be that there simply wasn't any major building between 150 and 200 CE, which would make the point moot). I did some digging and it's safest to say "end of C2nd", which I've done. UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:48, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Άγιοι_Απόστολοι_του_Σολάκη_6355.jpg should include a tag for the original work. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:31, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

RoySmith (Support)

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Overall, I'm really enjoying reading this.

  • There's a few places where technical words might bear some in-line explanation:
    • Linear B
      • I'm struggling to fit this one in inline (there's always the option of a footnote). I've made the body mention "inscribed in the Linear B script", but that's quite clunky in the lead. Do you think there's a good way to clarify that one too? I agree that many readers won't know this term, but they may still be able to get enough of the point regardless. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:56, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • narthex
    • diachronic
      • I think the next sentence probably explains that: a diachronic approach to the project, as opposed to the singular focus on the classical period then dominant in Greek archaeology. Readers can therefore straightforwardly take that "diachronic" means "not singly focused on the classical period", which is the key point here. Of course, I'll be the first to admit it's difficult to judge the difficulty of deducing a word you already know. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:56, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • degree in classics from Smith College, a women's liberal arts college Perhaps "liberal arts school" to avoid the repetition?
Maybe "tablets written in the Linear B script" would work? As for the lead, I think of it as similar to DYK hooks; it can't be wrong, but it's OK to take some liberties. Or maybe a better way to say that is that all writing has to balance accuracy vs concision. In the lead, you're aiming a bit more to the concise side than you would in the main body. So if the lead says "Linear B" without explanation, that's probably OK. RoySmith (talk) 02:57, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, that's what we've got so far, I think. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:19, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Frantz was an unpaid volunteer Aren't we all? If she was paid she wouldn't have been a volunteer, so "unpaid volunteer" seems redundant.
    • In principle, I agree, but thinking about both of the options:
For much of her work in the Agora excavations, Frantz was a volunteer -- was she forced to do some of it?
For much of her work in the Agora excavations, Frantz was unpaid -- was she meant to be paid, but her bosses cheated her?

Open to alternative suggestions, but I think the tautology here serves a purpose of avoiding unintended readings. UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:56, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • I don't think you need to link royalties
    • Here I think it serves a purpose, especially with second-language readers in mind: the word is "obviously" connected with royalty, far less common than it, and completely unrelated in meaning. The link might help out readers who wonder why I'm talking about kings and queens. There won't be many native English speakers who don't know the word, but then I couldn't tell you what the equivalent is in many of the other languages I claim to "speak". UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:56, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Frantz suffered a stroke in 1994, which affected her speech and movement.[62] On January 27, 1995, she was struck by a truck near her home in Princeton; she died on February 1 at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.[9] these two sentences seem out of place in a section about her career.
    • It does, but "Later life", in British English at least, is a synonym for "old age", so that wouldn't be appropriate. She never really retired, so "Later career and retirement" doesn't work, and "Later career and death" seems a bit clattering to me. Any ideas here? UndercoverClassicist T·C 18:56, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's all I see on a first read-through. I'll probably come back later and take another look RoySmith (talk) 15:14, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some more thoughts...

Maybe mention that she was homeschooled (https://paw.princeton.edu/article/through-archaeology-diplomacy-she-brought-america-and-greece-together)

You mention that here photos enabled Linear B to be decyphered, but I'd pull that up to the first time you mention it: "... six hundred tablets inscribed in the previously undecyphered Linear B script". Possibly also mention that it turned out to be "a form of ancient Greek".

  • We now have Just before the Second World War, Frantz photographed in two days more than six hundred tablets inscribed in the Linear B script from the Mycenaean site of Pylos, brought to Athens by their excavator, Carl Blegen, for safekeeping in the Bank of Greece. A set of prints of the photographs were delivered in 1940 to the University of Cincinnati, where Blegen worked, and were used by Emmett L. Bennett to make the first transcription and edition of the tablets, which he published in 1951. Frantz's obituarist James R. McCredie credited her photographs with enabling the decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris in 1952, which demonstrated that the Linear B script had been used to write a form of ancient Greek. There's a little distance between the photography and the decipherment, but that also means that we keep things chronological -- there was a 13-year gap in between. Do you think it would be better put a different way? UndercoverClassicist T·C 10:57, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I found one more mention: Evening star (Washington, D.C.), August 13, 1961, page 81, "Washington Journalist Tells of Greece Today" https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045462/1961-08-13/ed-1/?sp=81&q=%22alison+frantz%22&r=-0.013,-0.136,0.715,0.56,0 has one of her photos, which led me to:

Greek horizons by Miller, Helen Hill, 1899- Publication date 1961 Topics Greece -- Description and travel, Greece -- Civilization Publisher New York, Scribner Collection internetarchivebooks; americana; inlibrary; printdisabled Contributor Internet Archive Language English Item Size 332.8M https://archive.org/details/greekhorizons00millrich/mode/2up. I don't know if it has anything useful for your article, but has a lot of Frantz's photos.

I can't think of anything else. I'm not competent to review the archeological aspects of this, but from the point of view of a well-told story about an interesting (if obscure) woman, this ticks all my boxes so adding my support.

  • Thank you -- that's very kind. As far as I can see, Frantz's photos are used heavily in Miller's book, but she doesn't seem to have had any official role as a co-author, and looking at the picture credits, there are several others whose work was used as well. It could be added as Further Reading to allow readers to see some of her work, but since a lot of that will be available via the collection of her own works (especially once I've added the rest of the Agora volumes), I'm not sure how much value versus clutter that would add. UndercoverClassicist T·C 15:09, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Choliamb (support)

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I'm glad to see that you've continued to work on this. I always learn a lot from your archaeological biographies, and Frantz certainly deserves the attention. It won't surprise you to hear that I have a few minor criticisms about matters of content, which are easily addressed and which don't affect my admiration for the article.

My biggest complaint is that the final section of the list of publications still has the haphazard, hit-or-miss quality that I pointed out a year ago on the article's talk page. The first two sections (the works that she wrote or co-wrote) are thorough, but the third section (the works to which she contributed as a photographer) does not, imo, give enough space to the publications of the excavations in the Athenian Agora. This was Frantz's principal professional activity for three decades, and she provided the photographs for all of the volumes of the final excavation reports published between 1953 and 1970 -- nearly a dozen volumes in all, covering sculpture, lamps, pottery, and other kinds of artifacts. None of these appear in the list of publications. The small Agora Picture Books, which exposed her work to many more casual readers than the big excavation volumes, are also inconsistently listed. I understand that the existing references were collected as you came across them while writing, but now that the article has been nominated for FA, I think it's time for a more systematic listing that better represents her documentary work as the Agora photographer. Whether that means citing the relevant volumes individually or together as a group (an option I mentioned last year) is something I will leave to you, but I do think they should be cited, one way or the other. I won't clutter up this FAC page with more bibliographic detail, but I'll put a list of the relevant publications on the article talk page within the next day or two. (All are available online at the ASCSA web site, and the volumes in the Athenian Agora series are also on JSTOR, so access is no problem.)

A few other quibbles:

  • An exhibition of Frantz's photography was held at Smith College in October–November 1967. The latter exhibition focused on her images of Minoan and Mycenaean artifacts from Crete ... This exhibition was arranged in conjunction with a symposium held at Smith in honor of the archaeologist Harriet Boyd Hawes, who like Frantz was a Smith alumna (and later faculty member). The context is perhaps worth mentioning, since it explains the name of the exhibition, and the focus on the Bronze Age, which would otherwise be a puzzling choice for an exhibition of Frantz's work in the 1960s. Two different publications came out of the symposium and exhibition, both entitled A Land Called Crete: the first contained five conference papers; the second (the one cited here) contained Frantz's photographs, preceded by a brief introduction by Machteld Mellink and a note by the director of the Smith College Art Museum. Frantz herself contributed no text to this short booklet of photos, so depending on how you define "author", perhaps it should be moved down to the "As photographer" section of the list of publications. Either way, the description of the content of the exhibition requires a little adjustment: the photos include sites as well as artifacts, and they are not all "from Crete": a few are of sites and artifacts from the Greek mainland (Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos). Perhaps revise to something like this: "An exhibition of Frantz's photography was held at Smith College in October–November 1967, in conjunction with a symposium in honor of the archaeologist Harriet Boyd Hawes, who like Frantz was a Smith alumna. The exhibition focused on Frantz's images of Minoan and Mycenaean sites and artifacts ..." vel sim.? The book itself is available at the Internet Archive; add a link to the citation?
    • This is done now. I've put the volume in the "Photographer" section, though I'm torn about that one: the general principle was to put works where she's actually credited as the main creative force in "author", and those where it's fundamentally someone else's book in "photographer". However, I'm not particularly wedded to that scheme, and it might well be a silly one. UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:46, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree it could easily go either way. When Ansel Adams publishes a portfolio of photographs, we don't have any trouble calling him the author, and it's not at all unreasonable to do the same with Frantz here. I think the thing that tips it for me is that the volume does in fact contain some scholarly text, and it was written by Mellink, not Frantz. But it's certainly "Frantz's book" according to your very sensible criteria, and I have no objection if you change your mind and want to move it back. Choliamb (talk) 18:42, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm surprised to find the "Temple of Apollo Pythius" on Sikinos in the lead. It should certainly be included in the body of the article, but I think of it as a footnote in Frantz's career, and not something that deserves to be singled out as one of the most important facts about her. I see that there was already some pushback against the length of the lead during the GA review, and this is a good example of something that could be removed without any negative effects. In my opinion, the lead ought to focus above all on her photography (which is covered pretty well) and on her academic work and publications in the fields of Late Antique and Byzantine archaeology (which are what her reputation as a scholar, as opposed to a photographer, chiefly rests on, and which in my opinion are not given enough emphasis in the lead as it currently stands).
The current wording of the description of her work at Sikinos, and especially the phrase overturning its traditional identification as a temple, also seems to me a bit inflated and peacocky, and in one important respect misleading. There was no great scholarly consensus to be overturned here: the identification of this building as a temple of Apollo was suggested by Ross in the early 19th century on the basis on an inscription found nearby, and for lack of a better suggestion, it remained the name used by the very few people who had occasion to mention it. Hardly anyone seems to have cared, or to have studied the ancient building in any detail, before Frantz and Thompson and Travlos. They were not, however, the first to suggest that it might have been a tomb rather than a temple: as they acknowledge in their article (p. 399), that suggestion had already been made by Alfred Schiff in a paper presented at the DAI in Athens in 1896, and it was repeated (twice) in the publication of the inscriptions from Sikinos in IG XII 5, pp. 11-13, published in 1909 (no. 24: "Inest scamno hodiernae aetatis apud ecclesiam Episkopi, quae ecclesia aedificio antiquo facta Schiffio iudice non Apollinis Pythii templum fuit, sed monumentum sepulcrum"; no. 30: "Lapis a superiore dextraque mutilus antae ecclesiae Episkopis insertus, quae ecclesia templi antiqui muros occupavit a Rossio Apollini Pythio attributi, ab Alfredo Schiff pro heroo habiti.") So the idea that this was not actually a temple of Apollo was already in circulation, and Frantz et al. were not boldly toppling a well-established academic orthodoxy. (The reason why McCredie gives this so much emphasis is that he was writing his obituary for the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, and the building on Sikinos was the subject of the talk that Frantz gave on the occasion of her induction into the Society in 1973 at a meeting of the Society in 1983.) Even if Frantz reached the same conclusion independently and did not learn about Schiff's work until later, I still think it's worth noting in the body of the article, perhaps in a footnote, in order to avoid implying that she was somehow able to discern what others could not. I see that the wording of the lead a year ago was different: In 1967, she excavated a Roman tomb on the Greek island of Sikinos, having realized the previous year that its traditional identification as a temple was incorrect). This, while a little clunky, has a less revolutionary and therefore more appropriate tone (although it still doesn't make clear that Frantz wasn't the first to question the identification as a temple, and still doesn't explain why it belongs in the lead).
I think I've sorted this now. I assume Schiff is this guy? UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:39, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good to me now. And yes, I think that must be the right Schiff. Thanks. Choliamb (talk) 16:57, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • She is most famous for her photographs of the Parthenon frieze and of the sculptures of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. This is not what the source says. She is famous for her archaeological photography in general, but Rotroff and Lamberton never claim that she was most famous for these specific photographs (although many people, myself included, would agree that they are some of her best). In any case, it is silly and pointless to speculate about what someone who has produced such a wide-ranging body of scholarly and photographic work is "most famous" for. How do you measure that? And famous in whose eyes? Photographers? Classicists? Medievalists? The general public?
    • I've walked this down to "and became famous in the field for her work": granted, it's not particularly measurable, but I think we do need to say something to the effect that she wasn't only notable as a photographer for doing it while being a woman. Might have gone too far the other way? UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:45, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, maybe too far. Certainly farther than was necessary to satisfy me. My only objection was the superlative "most famous for", which I think is impossible to measure, and in any case is not in the source. But I'd be perfectly happy if you want to single out the Parthenon and Olympia photos for special mention of some kind, since they are by any measure among her best known and most admired works. The source will justify that: Rotroff and Lamberton cite them as examples (calling them "classic" -- not a great choice of adjective, since it's not clear precisely what it means, but never mind). My personal opinion, already expressed in the edit summary in which I added the publications to the article last year, is that no one has ever taken better photos of the Olympia sculpture, and no one ever will, so as far as I'm concerned you can walk right up to the edge of that line and I won't complain. Choliamb (talk) 18:42, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • In 1967, Smith College awarded Frantz a medal for the most outstanding graduate of its humanities program. This sentence reflects McCredie's careless phrasing, and makes it sound as if Frantz was the sole recipient of this medal and judged the most outstanding of all the graduates of the college. That is not the case. The Smith College Medal (the official name) is awarded every year to an alumna who "exemplifies the true purpose of a liberal arts education". Frantz certainly does that, but she is one of many: see the description of the award at the college web site here, with a long list of recipients, among whom are even more famous alums, like Gloria Steinem and Julia Child.

Cheers, Choliamb (talk) 21:49, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Choliamb. Will work my way through this -- entirely agreed on all counts, especially the bibliography (thank you in advance for doing the leg-work here!). Particularly grateful for the context on Sikinos and the Smith medal: that clears it up very helpfully, and I'd clearly got the wrong end of the stick there. UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:23, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Additional comment about the illustrations: I've only just got round to looking at closely at the images, and the first two seem to me problematic. In my opinion they should both be replaced or removed. I have a solution to suggest, but let me start by explaining what I see as the problems. I'll begin with the second one, which purports to show (but really does not show, in any useful sense) the Southwest Fountainhouse in the Agora. The use of the image is explained by the fact that monument in question happened to be discovered in the year that Frantz joined the excavations, but that does not seem to me sufficient justification, especially when this particular building has no other connection with Frantz, was not fully excavated until thirty years later, and today looks nothing like it looked in 1934. Illustrations should be directly relevant to the subject of the article, not simply decorative, and this photo, of an almost empty patch of weeds where the Southwest Fountainhouse once stood, isn't even decorative. There's no requirement that every section of an article must have an illustration, and in my opinion an irrelevant and misleading illustration is worse than no illustration at all.

And this image is misleading. The choice of the Southwest Fountainhouse was a bad one in any case, because this is one of the most poorly preserved monuments in the Classical Agora. The walls and columns were entirely robbed out in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, right down to and including most of the foundations, so the form of the building can only be reconstructed from the robbing trenches left behind by the workmen who dug up and removed the ancient blocks. You can get a better sense of the truly dismal state of preservation from this excavation photo. By the time the photograph included in the article was taken, fifty years later, most of these already very exiguous remains were no longer visible. Although the caption says "Remains of the Southwest Fountainhouse", the only remains in the image that are actually part of that building are the isolated block of white marble at right center, which is a stylobate block from colonnade of the porch, and the second white block behind it in the distance, in front of the modern terrace wall, which is one of the blocks that supported the wall of the reservoir. The main feature of the photograph, the scrappy wall of reused blocks in the foreground, on which the modern sign rests, is not part of of the fountainhouse: it's a later terrace wall that was built along the north side of the fountainhouse when the ground level was raised, probably in connection with the construction of the Middle Stoa in the 2nd century BC. So what this image actually shows is a modern sign with information about a building that is entirely invisible in the photo, except for the two blocks mentioned above.

I still don't believe that the mere existence of a building in the Agora that was discovered during the year when Frantz came to work there is an adequate reason for the inclusion of an otherwise irrelevant image, but if you absolutely must do it, a better choice of monument would be the Tholos, which, while not exactly well preserved, is in better shape than the fountainhouse and is easily recognizable in photographs. The front porch was discovered in 1933, but the rest of the building was uncovered in 1934, when it was recognized on the basis of its distinctive circular plan (see the Shear's excavation report on the 1934 season in Hesperia for 1935, pp. 343–348). This was a big deal at the time, because it was the first set of remains that could be certainly identified with a building known from the ancient literary sources. Somewhat surprisingly, given that this is arguably the most important civic building in the Classical Agora, the Commons doesn't have many good photos of the Tholos, but at least they're better than the photo of the vacant lot where the Southwest Fountainhouse once stood; the best one is probably File:Θόλος Αρχαίας Αγοράς 1149.jpg. Once again, however, this does not look much like it did in 1934, and the building has no direct connection to Frantz. So I recommend a different solution (see below).

The image in the "Early life and education" section is also seriously misleading. "This is a photo of the Acropolis three years before Frantz laid eyes on it" would not be a compelling argument for inclusion even if it were true, and in this case it is not true. There is no way that this photograph was taken in 1922 (which is just the publication date of the book from which the image in the Commons was uploaded). On the basis of the lack of development in the area southeast of the Acropolis and around the Ilissos river, it's more likely to date to the second half of the 19th century. But I can be more specific than that, and you don't have to trust my judgment. If you look carefully just to the left of the Parthenon, you will see the top of another monument peeking up above the Acropolis wall, and as soon as you do, you of all people will know immediately why this photo must have been taken before 1874. (For those playing along at home, the answer is in one of the nominator's previous Good Articles.) It can't be much earlier than 1870 though, because the hermit's cell on top of the Olympieion is missing, and that is still visible in photos taken in the mid to late 1860s (like this one from 1865). So this photo must have been taken within a few years on either side of 1870, and unless you want to change the caption to "Athens ca. 1870, half a century before Frantz's first visit to the city", I'm afraid it must go as well.

Happily, I have a simple two-part solution to suggest, which solves all of the problems mentioned above:

  • First, replace the 19th-century image of the Acropolis in the "Early life and education" section with one of the photos of Frantz herself from the Smith College yearbook of 1924 (which I just uploaded this morning; see my note on your user talk page). Either the solo portrait with necktie or the photo of the hockey team would do; I think I prefer the latter, since it's a little larger and gives the reader some extra information about her college athletic activities, but I leave the choice to you.
  • Then replace the invisible Southwest Fountainhouse in the "Early career" section with File:ETH-BIB-Akropolis-Weitere-LBS MH02-26-0019.tif, an aerial photo of Athens in 1934, which shows not only the Acropolis but the Agora excavations as well. The caption might be something like this: "Aerial photograph of central Athens in 1934, the year Frantz joined the Agora excavations. The excavation zone is visible in the upper center of the image, behind the Acropolis." (Rephrase as you see fit.) This is better than any photo of the Acropolis alone, regardless of date, because it includes the Agora, but it avoids singling out a specific monument that has no direct relevance to Frantz. It's not ideal, but it's a lot better than what you've got.

There are other possible solutions, including just removing the photos altogether, but this is what I would do if it were up to me. Cheers, Choliamb (talk) 16:43, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done -- nicely spotted with the Frankish Tower -- as you say, particularly unfortunate of this nominator to have missed that! Images swapped as you suggest. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:00, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent. I'm sorry to see the original lead image replaced, and I'm not sure I agree that the undergraduate college photos make the fair use of the original lead photo impossible. I would argue that the college photos, which show the subject at age 20, are essentially still teenage photos, and because there are still no PD or suitably licensed images of Frantz as an adult, the use of the original lead photo was justified. But we can argue about that elsewhere. Happy now to support this fine article. 21:29, 3 March 2025 (UTC) Choliamb (talk) 21:29, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

MSincccc

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Lead
  • She was the official photographer of the excavations of the Agora of Athens, and of ancient Greek sculpture, including the Parthenon frieze and works from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Could this version be used in the article?
  • Could the article Embassy of the United States, Athens be linked here: ...and was subsequently the cultural attaché of the US embassy in Athens.
  • She was considered among the foremost photographers... Could "is" be used in place of "was" here? MSincccc (talk) 04:45, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think the sources would support that. We have good evidence that, during her lifetime, she was considered among the best people in the field, but I don't think we have sources to say that she is still considered to outrank those who have come into it since. UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:39, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Second World War and aftermath
    • You could the link to the article
Probably a WP:OVERLINK, on paper, but I've done it (as I've done so in other articles). UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:39, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Matarisvan

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Hi UndercoverClassicist, it is good to be reviewing one of your noms after quite some time. My comments:

  • My first comment is very minor, but would we consider linking to Minnesota and Edinburgh in the Early life and education section?
  • Remove the second link to Princeton University in the Early life and education?
  • "frescoes of several churches – demolished shortly afterwards": Could we give some background here as to why the churches were demolished, perhaps in a note?
  • "she delivered lectures in Byzantine Greece": Very minor error, but I reckon we meant "on", not "in".
  • We have photographs of all the major works by Frantz, I think we are only missing a photo of the Temple of Zeus, whether it be a photograph by Frantz or someone else would not matter to its inclusion.
  • According to MOS:NBSP, we must use NBSPs before CE or BCE dates.
  • I have mostly fixed the harvnb error where "Frantz, Thompson & Travlos 1969, pp. 400, 411; Frantz 1983, pp. 72–73. For Schiff's suggestion, see von Gaertringen 1909, pp. 11–12.}}" was parsed differently from preceding the harvnb ref. There is a small harv error in there, please excuse me for it.
  • Link to Susan I. Rotroff and Robert D. Lamberton in the body and biblio?
  • Link to John Travlos, Dorothy Burr Thompson, Bernard Ashmole, Joseph Alsop, Rotroff and Lamberton in the Selected publications section, as done for all the other co-authors?
  • Link to Friedrich Hiller von Gaertringen, Lucy Shoe Meritt, Brunilde Ridgeway, Martha Sharp Joukowsky, Stephen V. Tracy in the biblio?

That's all from me. Cheers Matarisvan (talk) 09:52, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to post this earlier, but I would be much obliged if you could post your comments at a recent FAC nom of mine, namely Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Battle of Mycale/archive1, I think your knowledge of the classics would be very helpful there. Many thanks in advance Matarisvan (talk) 09:56, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Source review: pass

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To follow soon(ish) - SchroCat (talk) 17:31, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Formatting
  • Ref 73 is missing a few parameters (website/publisher, date, retrieval date, etc)
  • Ref 74 Ditto (it has a retrieval date, but not website/publisher, date, etc)
  • Aside from those, no other issues identified in the sources. All suitably and consistently formatted.
  • There is only tiny tweak to be made in the Selected publications, with her 1944 work "Charles H. Morgan, II" where you have "Pp." instead of the "pp." you use elsewhere, but that's it
Scope and reliability

Searches (albeit by a non-specialist) have shown no additional potential sources missing.

  • Kourelis, Kostis (May 2, 2009). "Alison Frantz Studies". Objects-Building-Situations. Retrieved February 2, 2024. is from a blog page, but as Kourelis is a subject-matter expert, this is acceptable under WP:BLOGS
- SchroCat (talk) 16:40, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, SchroCat. I didn't see anything specific in Kourelis's blog when I first looked at it that we don't already have, though his synopsis of authors working on Frantz is useful. Did you have something in mind?
By way of full disclosure, I've requested a copy of tracked down and added a book chapter by Alexandra Moschovi, whom he mentions ("Greece as Photograph"); I don't expect it to change the article massively, but it might have a few useful detailsit ended up being condensed to a sentence. There are a couple of fairly trivial mentions of her in other blog-like sources (mostly that she socialised at some point with such-and-such people), but I don't think any of those really pass muster for inclusion.
Done on the rest. Dates aren't straightforward for those sort of web sources (we could use the update date stored in the Google record, if it has one, or the first archive date on Internet Archive, but neither are quite what we want) and, I'd suggest, somewhat meaningless since the sources are databases/collections of much older material anyway. However, I've added the parameters that I can. I don't think we should lc the Pp in the Morgan citation, as this isn't giving the page numbers at which to find the source: it's part of the title (of the review), saying that the work has 15 pages of introduction and 373 of main text. Put another way, it's equivalent to writing, as a sentence: "Pages: 15 introductory, plus 373". UndercoverClassicist T·C 19:03, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I had nothing in mind on Kourelis, just noting it as being an acceptable use of a blogsite if anyone asks why it wasn't looked at during the review
All the rest of your comments accepted and Moschovi passes both formatting and reliability checks. Sources duly passed. - SchroCat (talk) 08:01, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Kusma

[edit]

An excellent article! It is quite hard to find anything to criticise. Just a query: is it worth giving a rough figure of when "late antiquity" and the "Ottoman period" were in order to clarify what time periods Frantz worked on? (I know that Athens was Byzantine for a long time, but I have no idea how close to 1453 Byzantine rule of Athens ended). —Kusma (talk) 17:53, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Kusma. I've gone in and added the dates for the various periods -- stuck with those for Athens, which aren't always the same as for the other parts of Greece (here, for example, the Byzantine period ends in 1204). UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:23, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good. The numbers aren't exactly what I expected, so I think it is good to have them :) Support, great article. —Kusma (talk) 21:36, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]


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