Talk:Margaret Sibella Brown

Margaret Sibella Brown has been listed as one of the Natural sciences 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: January 2, 2022. (Reviewed version).

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A fact from Margaret Sibella Brown appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 29 November 2018 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that bryologist Margaret Sibella Brown was awarded an honorary master of arts degree from Acadia University at the age of 84? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2018/November. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Margaret Sibella Brown.

There are references to both a Margaret Sibella Brown and a Margaret Sybella Brown ("i" vs. "y" in middle name), both of whom lived in Nova Scotia, and both with a father named "R. Brown". It is unclear if these are the same person with alternate spellings of her name, or two different people. For example, this photo and this other photo are clearly the same person, but with the two different name spellings. On the other hand, most of the sources I can find for Sibella talk about her being a bryologist, and most of the sources for Sybella talk about her being a nurse. Very confusing. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:46, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Upon further research, it seems clear that the various sources all refer to the same person. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:19, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

• "Brown, Margaret Sibella (1866-1961) on JSTOR". plants.jstor.org. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
• "Margaret Sibella Brown". nsis.chebucto.org. Retrieved 23 April 2020.
• "Harvard University Herbaria & Libraries". kiki.huh.harvard.edu. Retrieved 23 April 2020.

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

Reviewer: AleatoryPonderings (talk · contribs) 06:20, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• The level of genealogical detail in "Family and early life" is excessive (see WP:NOTGENEALOGY. I also don't see a cite for her birth date or birth place. Could you provide that?

Added a citation for birth date & place. I'll go through and work on thinning the level of detail tomorrow.

• Can you pick either dmy or mdy dates? Both are used.

fixed.

• This might be a "me" confusion, but I always thought finishing schools were in lieu of education at the university level? So I find it surprising that she attending both University of King's College and the Anglo-German Institute. Maybe some additional explanation here would be helpful. Could you also say when she got her BA?

Not sure what to say about the finishing school. That's what the source says: "Margaret was educated at the Anglican School for Girls in Halifax and the Anglo-German Institute finishing school in Stuttgart". Oddly enough, another source says, "She took graduate studies at Stuttgart". I'll admit, "finishing school" and "graduate studies" don't quite go together in my mind, but that's what the sources say. There's no mention in the sources I found of what her BA major was, or when it was granted.

• "it was unusual to find women working in the sciences". Is there a reason you don't say "women scientists were unusual" or something like that? "Find women working" is rather elliptical.

Rephrased.

• I have tagged the paragraph beginning "Brown died in her Halifax home" with {{cn}}. Could you address that? It may be as simple as adding the cite from the following paragraph to this one. Also, was there no obituary or equivalent? A secondary source would be best to confirm that "Margaret Sebella Brown" is the same as the subject of this article (although it of course seems quite plausible).

Fixed.

• I don't see the encyclopedic value of File:Margaret Sybella Brown and Elizabeth Brown as adults.jpg. I guess it depicts her with plants, but they don't look like mosses ...

A photo of the subject in her home seems useful, but if you feel strongly about it, I can remove it.

• Can you explain how [1] is a reliable source? The live link is a redirect and the archived copy looks like a self-published RTF file.

Hmm, it was just the wrong URL. It's an official history of the society, which seems reliable for who was a member. I've updated the URL to point to the copy on the society's website. The URL that was there pointed to what looked like some early draft. I'm not sure where that came from.

• Is it possible to explain a bit more about her scientific impact? I see the awards listed, with accompanying citations, but I was left wondering when I read this: what contribution(s) make her a notable scientist?

Yeah, I get what you're saying. The gist is she was basically a upper class society girl from a wealthy family at a time when most girls like that majored in being a rich society girl, but instead she made some recognized contributions to science. The problem is, writing that would be rather blatant WP:OR. I'll come back tomorrow and see what I can do here.

Actually, I think what you're looking for is the 2nd sentence of the lede: "Although lacking formal scientific training...".

Passed it. The genealogical stuff was my main outstanding concern and I addressed it to my satisfaction. I also added more details about her scientific contributions, which resolved the remaining concerns I had about that. Comprehensive to the extent the subject allows for it, clearly written, references good and there are cites in the right places, the British Bryological Society ref is fixed. Neutral, illustrated, stable. Meets the criteria. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 15:42, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@AleatoryPonderings thank you for the quick review and all your help. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:12, 2 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Srich32977 regarding Special:Diff/1251561805, I'm fine with changing the dashes, but I'm curious why you deleted the Example text attributes from the citations. RoySmith (talk) 21:03, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

When JSTOR is a parameter in the citation, it will render as "JSTOR". Thus it becomes redundant clutter. – S. Rich (talk) 21:19, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

OK, makes sense, thanks. RoySmith (talk) 01:34, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]