Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Gods' Man/archive1

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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 Ian Rose 10:01, 22 February 2014 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Gods' Man[edit]

Gods' Man (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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Nominator(s): Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:19, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note the sinister placement of the apostrophe—according to a reliable source with his own Wikipedia article, this book will hurt your children, and is the "the darkest, ugliest book [he has] ever seen". It is a Faustian tale of an aspiring artist who sells his soul for a magic paintbrush. A tale told entirely in pictures, it was the best selling American wordless novel, and probably the best remembered today. In recent years it has been rebranded as a graphic novel, and has seen a renaissance of publisher and reader interest. Enjoy, fellow editors! Enjoy your doom! Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:19, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support from ColonelHenry[edit]

I had the good fortune of reviewing this article at GAN, and have benefited from Curly Turkey's coverage of graphic and wordless novels by being inspired to look into the genre more. So, seeing it pop on my watchlist with a FAC nomination, I wanted to offer my support and few comments here.

With regard to the featured article criteria, this article definitely well-written, informative, intriguing, and in this case has all the potential of being a bad influence. :-) CT's work provides a great analysis of the themes and symbolism of the novel. Writing, structure, and summary are all clearl, well-organized, and in compliance with MOS and appropriate guidelines Based on a review of its sources, and compared to other articles available online and in print on the book, this article covers all the major aspects of the work sufficiently and neglects none. The sources cover a comprehensive survey of information available on the subject, the citations are consistent, and the article complies with WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:CITE, and the article is both stable and entirely neutral discussion of the subject.

I am glad to support this article here for promotion to FA status.--ColonelHenry (talk) 23:39, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from Midnightblueowl[edit]

Looking good so far, but just a few concerns:

  • In the introduction, we refer to "New York" but do not specify if this is a reference to the city or the wider state; we also don't add a link.
  • Also in the lede, we use the abbreviation "US" and I think that in this instance "United States" would be more explicit, particularly for an international readership.
  • The use of the wording "other Americans to try their hands at the medium" is perhaps a little colloquial; non-native English speakers might have trouble understanding "try their hands"; could we replace it with something a little more straightforward ?
  • In the Content section, we read this: "Each image moves the story forward by an interval Ward chooses to maintain story flow; Ward wrote in Storyteller Without Words (1974) that too great an interval would put too much interpretational burden on the reader, while too little would make the story tedious. Wordless novel historian David A. Beronä likens these concerns with the storytelling methods of comics.[2]" Is all of this information contained in that single reference at the end, and if so, maybe we should duplicate it after the first that I just quoted. A similar situation is apparent in the paragraph following on from it.
  • Do we need to link to Plautus twice in quick succession ? And the quote would (in my opinion) read better if it was included directly in the prose paragraph.
    • Done. I considered it a different context in a quote template, à la image captions, but since I've merged it into the prose it's a moot point now. Curly Turkey (gobble) 22:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "he attacks one of them, who happens to be a police officer" – maybe consider replacing "who happens to be" as it seems fairly superfluous in the text.
    • Well, in the context he didn't realize he'd attacked an officer until it was too late. I've reworded it to "turns out to be a police office"—is that better? Curly Turkey (gobble) 22:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why do we have the birth and death date of the author twice in the article ?
    • I only see it in the lead and the body—is that what you mean? Curly Turkey (gobble) 22:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, sorry I wasn't clearer. Midnightblueowl (talk) 21:09, 8 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • Well, the lead is meant to be more-or-less redundant to the body, so I'm not sure it's an issue. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:26, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • We could do with adding further biographical detail on Ward into the Background section.
  • Why add the original German titles of publications in a separate "Notes" section ? Why not do what we do over at the likes of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and have the original language titles in brackets ?
    • A couple of reasons:
      • I prefer keeping glosses out of the text, as it interrupts reading flow.
      • With the Tintin articles, Le Vingtième Siècle is the actual title of the newspaper, and "The Twentieth Century" is a gloss we provide for convenience, but isn't an official title of the newspaper (there was no English edition, was there?). The books in this article do have official English translations under which they've been published, which makes the original titles trivial in the context. As a convenience I include the original titles anyways, but as per above I prefer to kick them into the notes section to keep the prove clean.
      • I wasn't the original or primary editor of any of those Tintin articles, so I didn't want to enforce my own preferences on the articles, especially since I know my preference isn't widespread, and it's a pretty fine point to start an argument over. Curly Turkey (gobble) 22:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise I think that this is a fairly strong contender for FAC, although admit I am no expert in assessing such things. Midnightblueowl (talk) 21:42, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • The genre has so few examples and so little literature on it that you could become an expert without unreasonable effort. ;) Curly Turkey (gobble) 22:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Image review[edit]

  • an illustration career for himself. - how about "an career as an illustrator"?
  • The artwork is executed in black and white; the images vary in size and dimension, up to 6 by 4 inches (15 cm × 10 cm), the size of the opening and closing images of each chapter. - this begs the question of page size
    • According to the editions at AbeBooks, the book was octavo size. My other sources don't specify. Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:26, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • This page (is it legal?) specifies 13.5 x 22 cm. Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:39, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • told in sixty-three silent woodcut prints. - silent implies sound. Technically, all prints are silent (until you drop them). Wouldn't "wordless" work best?
  • whose story - a novel is a person?
    • You're confusing "whose" with "who's": "whose" is a relative pronoun whose meaning includes "of which" or "belonging to which". Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:26, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • I know it's a relative pronoun. The issue is, it's a relative pronoun which is usually used for people, and its use for inanimate objects is disputed at best. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:19, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • Disputed at worst, I'd posit. I can certain imagine people disagreeing with it on a gut level because of its homonymity with "who's", but it's been firmly a part of the language for centuries—going back to Middle English, in fact. Fowler larfs at those who proscribe it: "In the starch that stiffens English style, one of the most effective ingredients is the rule that whose shall refer only to persons; to ask a man to write flexible English, but forbid him whose 'as a relative pronoun of the inanimate', is like sending a soldier on 'active' service & insisting that his tunic collar shall be tight & high." Basically, it's "disputed" by the same starched shirts who insist on such wince-inducing unEnglish constructions as "It is he". Curly Turkey (gobble) 03:26, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
          • This convinces me that all the authorities that matter are on board. Curly Turkey (gobble) 03:31, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
            • Since that was written in response to another article, on the same site, I'm still fairly certain that it's disputed. Personally I'd never use it. Why not something like "The work inspired Ward to create a wordless novel of his own, with a story stemming from his "youthful brooding" on the short, tragic lives of artists such as Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Keats, and Shelley" or something similar? Avoid the pronoun altogether. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:30, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
              • Because this usage of the pronoun is well established, natural English, and I have a problem with giving in to artificial proscriptions. English is complicated enough without these pointless, unnatural rules against split infinitives and stranded propositions. It's a matter of fixing what ain't broken. Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:06, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
                • Well, in that case, I'll leave the question up to consensus. If other reviewers have no issue with it, then I'll hold my peace. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:08, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • More later. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:58, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Gods' Man was the best selling. - The way this is phrased, it sounds as if it was the best selling of the time, which, being the first, it obviously was. "proved to be" or something may work
  • Done. Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:53, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • What does his TB have to do with anything? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 14:52, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • It explains why the family constantly moved when he was young. Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:26, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Again, what does that have to do with this article? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:22, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • Well, since this is his first major work, and because Midnightblueowl asked so nicely, I thought it was best to give a capsule history of the man as context for how he came to create this unusual book.
          • Perhaps, but I'd expect the background to be limited to things which could feasibly have influenced him. Otherwise it feels a bit wandering. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:08, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
            • Is there any other part of this background you'd cut? Curly Turkey (gobble) 06:35, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
              • Just that one sentence, "Ward suffered from tuberculosis and persistent inner ear and mastoid infections as a child, and his family moved frequently in search of an environment that would promote his health." It doesn't really, explicitly or implicitly, relate to the work and/or the contents of the work. Everything else, sure, keep it. At least it lets us know some of of the social and biographical aspects which shaped his development as an author/artist. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 06:41, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
                • Done, and I've merged the first two paragraphs, as the second one's now kinda short. Curly Turkey (gobble) 07:08, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - A nice, succinct, article, although I should note that this is likely available on Jstor, and you should give it a shot. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:10, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually, if you look carefully, it's already cited. Thanks for the support, by the way! Curly Turkey (gobble) 07:14, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support from Jim Personally, I'd prefer the three German notes as parenthetical translations, I don't think they justify notes which add no other info. I'm certainly not going to oppose on the strength of that, though. Nice article Jimfbleak - talk to me? 08:02, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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