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1755 Lisbon earthquake

2(c): no in-line references at all.--Donar Reiskoffer (talk) 07:51, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

• Incorrect. It has inline references aplenty, as well as references. It does not have footnotes, and these are not the same things. Geogre (talk) 11:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Remove, unless citations added. Comment I would agree it has plenty of references—in the "References" section. I would not, however, agree that it has sufficient in-line references. There are a very few page numbers, which can be found immediately after direct quotes. However, most of the paragraphs throughout most of the article have no reference citations at all. Unless these are added, the FA star should be removed. The article is well-written overall, and someone with access to the listed references could surely cite the facts accordingly and save it from that fate! MeegsC | Talk 14:03, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

So, um, how do we know how many citations are needed? I mean, if a paragraph has only one reference, do we know that it needed three? One per sentence? Is there a formula, or do we do something like, "Statements likely to be challenged?" That last would then seem to ask who has challenged the factuality, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be necessary then to have Donarreiskoffer actually say that something is untrue? Wouldn't it wait for the talk page to have challenges? Otherwise, would the people nominating please list exactly the proper density of note per word so that all articles may be saved from the fire? Also, if page numbers are necessary, is it possible that there are no page numbers? I've used references before that didn't have them. If you know that there are page numbers, does that mean you have the references at hand? If you do not have them, what does that mean? Again, the magic formula would be nice. That way people could enter their articles into databases and produce stars. Utgard Loki (talk) 15:55, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

The reader should be able to find, looking at the article alone, where any assertion which "is challenged or is likely to be challenged", can be supported. If it is genuinely consensus of all the authorities listed, fine; but this article is (quite sensibly) divided into historical and philosophical sections, and sources which support one will not gp into the other. What we should require is enough citation to find the book in which the assertion is, and then to find the page on which it is stated, once one has the book in hand. Page numbers are preferable for this; but common sense should apply. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:53, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Marvellous page. Nothing wrong with it at all. Giano (talk) 14:38, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

• Questions: For the sort of citation that makes an FA, compare Edward Teller, just successfully reviewed.
  • It looks like the history of the quake itself is a collation of Brooks, Kendrick, and perhaps Chase. Is this true? (If it is, the article should say so, and not leave the reader to guess.)
  • Is every detail in those sections easily found there?
  • If not, what are the exceptions?
  • What did you use Seco y Pinto for?
  • Where is Pombal's survey found (and the comparison with Chinese work)? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:43, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - this is featured article standard. No need to remove. Put on a list of articles that need the connection between their content and their references made clearer. Carcharoth (talk) 12:54, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

• Comment - Compared to Great Fire of London this article does not seem comprehensive and therefore fails criteria 1b. Questions I would like to have answered when reading this article are for example: What was Lisbon like at the time? If there were political tensions after the quake, then what were the political situation at the time. Also the lead mentions that the quake disrupted Portugals colonial ambitions - this is not mentioned later. On a more scientific note it would be nice to know if Lisbon is located on a major fault line and is there a history of earthquakes in the area?--Peter Andersen (talk) 21:38, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree it could be more comprehensive, but that is something that should be addressed over the next few weeks (hopefully). For now, your fault line query can be answered by Image:1755 Lisbon Earthquake Location.gif (which should be discussed in the article). The red line is the boundary between the Eurasian plate and the African plate. See also Image:Plates tect2 en.svg. The epicentre was to the south of that boundary, and Lisbon is to the north. It would be nice to know how the USGS (and others) calculate epicentres for historical earthquakes like this. Carcharoth (talk) 01:02, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
  • "Could be as good as X" is not the same thing as "is not FA standard." It is FA standard. It's not a footnoterphone traffic jam, but it has references and citations for statements that are or are likely to be challenged. With that standard, the burden is on those who wish to remove: what do you challenge, and where is the contrary information that challenges it? This is not, "Where can you imagine having a question," like the fellow who wanted "Montana is a state" footnoted, but where is there contrary information that throws this into question? The article is pretty faithful and synthetic. Geogre (talk) 02:14, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Geogre are you commenting on my statement? I said nothing about footnotes but questioned whether the article is comprehensive.--Peter Andersen (talk) 08:37, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
• Comment My recollection is that the disparate sections of the article (philosophy and seismology, for example) came from various subject experts, not from those named book sources; it's very much a synthetic article. I think it will be hard to retrofit the article with footnotes. Though largely accurate, the most debated fact in the article is the death count; I've seen estimates a fraction of the 60,000-100,000 thousand figure, and the article would benefit from a discussion about the limits of our actual knowledge about how many people died. (There was no census taken, etc.) In any case, however, it's unfair to compare this article to the one about the London fire. There's far less readily-available source material for the 1755 earthquake, in my opinion, and no good recent book-length studies, at least in English. Sandover (talk) 02:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)