Talk:Oscar James Campbell Jr.

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	This article was accepted from this draft on 6 April 2023 by reviewer Drmies (talk · contribs).

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A fact from Oscar James Campbell Jr. appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 8 June 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Oscar James Campbell Jr., an American scholar of Shakespeare, complained in 1926 that PhD students of English had to read "masses of stupid and essentially insignificant material"?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2023/June. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Oscar James Campbell, Jr..

Wikipedia

Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Red-tailed hawk (talk) 19:20, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Comment or view
Article history

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... that Oscar James Campbell Jr., an American scholar of Shakespeare, complained in 1926 that Ph.D. students in English had to read "masses of stupid and essentially insignificant material"? Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/802485
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Džuvljarke: Roma Lesbian Existence

Created by Drmies (talk) and Pomfret watcher (talk). Nominated by Drmies (talk) at 15:13, 11 April 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Oscar James Campbell, Jr.; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

Sufficiently new and long. Sourcing could be better - we have three refs to Wikipedia. On a quick skim I see no issues with CV or close paraphrasing. Unfortunately, the image will need to be removed as it is not going in the public domain and will likely be deleted on Commons. Wording is reasonably neutral. The hook is fun and appropriately cited. QPQ is done. Drmies, Pomfret watcher, when the issues of the Wikipedia cites and the image are resolved, I think this can be approved. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:18, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- PMC, I was not aware of the refs to Wikipedia: I have removed them. I'll see if the material was noteworthy and if it can be properly verified. Same with the image: I see now that it's up for deletion, and I am fine with that--I'm not going to work too hard to get an image in there. Thanks. Drmies (talk) 23:55, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  - Okay, with the changes, we're good to go. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 13:58, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    - @Premeditated Chaos and Drmies: I should ask – is the inclusion of the quote in the article really due weight? It was reputably published, but I don't think that provides evidence that that specific quote merits inclusion in the article if the piece or the quote hasn't been discussed by third parties. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 17:20, 24 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      - theleekycauldron, I don't understand the question. You mean does it have due weight? Well, why not? That a quote can't be in the article unless others have discussed it is news to me. "Reputably published" it was, yes--isn't that enough? Drmies (talk) 23:34, 24 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        I wouldn't say I'm making a blanket statement such as a quote can't be in the article unless others have discussed it – rather, who says that the quote is more important to the author's life and body of work? Is it simply representative of the majority of his work? We cover plenty of journalists, authors, and academics on Wikipedia – it'd be quite odd to have those articles feature quotes that the page editors simply wanted to include. In my mind, that's a bit more editorializing than we generally have room to do. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 01:06, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        I don't think I understand the problem. I use pull quotes all the time, including in almost all my FAs; you would think someone would have given me the gears for it by now if it were an issue. Quotes illustrate the subject's views in a way that paraphrasing is often insufficient for. It might be different if the quote concerned something the subject had nothing to do with - design of sewer systems, for example - but his opinion as an English literature scholar about scholarship in English literature feels very much on-topic. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:27, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        Maybe it should be moved out of the Biography section and into the section on his work, then? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 06:15, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        I don't see what difference that makes. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:18, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        
        Why? PMC, I'm as confused as you are. theleekycauldron, we are encouraged to find a fun fact, interesting and well-verified, are we not? On today's DYK, I read that "film critic and censor D. I. Suchianu wanted Romanian moviegoers to cease "falling asleep whenever they're not shown a naked breast [or] a hip that's getting some action'". Is that quote more important than -- well look at the lead of that article. Drmies (talk) 19:56, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        @Premeditated Chaos and Drmies: re other stuff: Suchianu's quote was printed by another author, in another publication. I can't access the original, but I'd hazard it to be a secondary source. There's no requirement that a hook constitute due weight for the entire article, but there is a requirement that the hook appear in the article, in which case the fact does have to constitute due weight for its spot.
        
        The current "Biography" section is mostly a cursory overview of Campbell's life – places worked, places lived, works published. Were I just coming across the article from the Main Page, I'd probably assume that this quote is some important or central piece of Campbell's career, something that is due weight amongst all of the other overarching facts in this section.
        
        And there's a danger to simply quoting from primary sources: the danger of misrepresenting what the document, as a whole, is about. When I read this article, I see that 1. Campbell wrote a paper on the value of a Ph.D. in English literature, and 2. Campbell criticizes some of the material that Ph.D. students are required to learn. But reading the source, it actually seems to be that Campbell is going against the grain of his time and defending the value of a Ph.D., writing, "we ought to scrutinize it for possible good before we reject it utterly" and "Almost everyone will admit that the course of study leading toward a Ph.D. degree is a good method of stimulating productive scholarship".
        
        So I'll ask again: why is this quote – which is neither elevated by secondary independent sourcing nor wholly representative of the document it's taken from – so important? and why is it here? I'm sure many a scholar has an opinion on the field in which they've plied their trade; why is it more due weight than any other paper they've published, in the absence of any kind of secondary discussion designating it so? I'd love to know the thought process behind how this article was written. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 21:02, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly Leeky, I feel you are being unreasonable here. There is nothing in the DYK criteria that mandates that quotes have to be central to someone's career before they can appear as a hook. There's nothing in the DYK criteria that mandates that the hooks have to be central to the subject, even! All they are asked to be is short and punchy and likely to amuse a general audience enough to get them to click, and this quote satisfies that. There's nothing in the MOS that I've ever seen that mandates that quotes must be taken from secondary sources only. The quote is on-topic for the subject, and is not a misrepresentation of anything he said. You are doubling down on something you have no policy-based reason to object to. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:56, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

PMC and I chatted a bit off-wiki, and we found a revision that's workable for both of us – feel free to revert if it doesn't work for you, Drmies, but we're good on my end. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 23:42, 25 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- theleekycauldron, Premeditated Chaos, I guess, but this is really kind of vague. What is insignificant? Anyone who knows the profession understands the struggle over medieval material in the field of English, and they know that the former requirement (in England and the US) for people getting English degrees to read Beowulf and study Old English is now ancient history--so in the end he was right, in a way. But more important, for the hook, the stuff that he said was stupid and insignificant, why would we not say what we know he thought it was? Why remove those few words that lend actual substance to the hook? Drmies (talk) 01:55, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  - Drmies, none of the quote from your version was removed; the whole thing was moved down the article to its own section and the article now mentions a little more of his argument. However, to be clear, the discussion Leeky and I had concerned this DYK in general. I repeated the opinion I gave above that I did not feel the objections were policy-based. Since part of Leeky's concern was that she felt the quote inaccurately represented Campbell's views on English degrees, I suggested she edit the article to "sum up more of what he said". I object to the wording "we found a revision that's workable for both of us" - we did not actually discuss the substance of the edit. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:16, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    - OK, I see; striking out my remark. Thanks. PMC. Drmies (talk) 12:46, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]