Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Log from the Sea of Cortez

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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 review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 07:46, 15 March 2007.

The Log from the Sea of Cortez[edit]

Self nomination The story of a specimen collecting expedition taken by John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts around the Gulf of California. It was a stub until a couple of weeks ago when I took pity on it. It's been through a helpful peer review and I now present it for your consideration. Yomanganitalk 11:33, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: A quick skim makes it look pretty good, but I haven't read it in enough detail yet to say more. Adam Cuerden talk 12:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I've given this article a pretty good read and I've decided it's very well written. It is also well sourced, formatting appears flawless (as I expect from all FAs), and has a good use of images. There doesn't seem to be anything missing, and the details do not become overly trivial. Good work. Jay32183 03:30, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Lovely piece of work, very readable, just the right length for the subject, and with a well-judged structure. An excellent addition to Wikipedia's best articles. qp10qp 04:57, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggestions;
  1. the picture could be larger to fill up the infoboxes' width.
  2. the picture also needs a fair use rationale
  3. the quality of the picture isn't that great
  4. only two categories? surely more could be added.
Just a few small suggestions after a quick look.--Empire Earth 14:00, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the suggestions. I missed the fair use rationale for that image, as it was already being used elsewhere. Corrected that now. The image quality isn't meant to be that good under a fair use rationale, and hence the smaller size (I've upped it a little, but I can't see a reason to make it as big as the infobox). Feel free to add any other relevant categories - those two seemed the most useful to me. Yomanganitalk 14:14, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object. The article is in fact really well-written and flawlessly formatted. The problem is that the "Expedition" section relies primarily on the logs of the expedition themselves. This is especially a problem since the article itself admits that the book is "to some extent a work of fiction". You can't rely on a work of fiction to tell you about real events. How do you know that some of what is claimed to be true was not in fact invented by Steinbeck?--Carabinieri 15:19, 27 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • That is a problem with only having a single detailed source (although having multiple sources wouldn't necessarily make it true). Perhaps if I retitled it "Steinbeck's account of the expedition"? Apart from the points mentioned in the article, there has been no attempt to revise the account presented of the trip, something that would have undoubtedly have happened given the interest in Steinbeck (to take another "travelogue" example, the account of his adventures that T. E. Lawrence presented in Seven Pillars of Wisdom have been picked apart, and I'd expect much the same approach by Steinbeck scholars). If you take the approach that it is a work of fiction, then the article still needs to cover the "plot". Jaws, for example, covers the plot from the primary source, and there are other FAs that rely on presenting details from a primary source as fact. I think pointing out the flaws with Steinbeck's account, while still using it as a source is valid, just as we'd use Suetonius to detail aspects of Nero's personal life while acknowledging he was something of a sensationalist. Yomanganitalk 10:13, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I know nothing about John Steinbeck other than that he wrote The Grapes of Wrath, and that he has one of those names that stands out. I know nothing about the subject. After reading the article, which was painless, I feel that I know a little bit more about John Steinbeck and a lot more about the subject. Which is amazing for Wikipedia. However I am not happy with "it was assumed by many", which is naff. That might have been acceptable a few years ago, when Wikipedia was a plaything for anime-loving manchilden. But for an encyclopaedia that aspires to greatness, and is currently the fourth Google return for "cancer", [1] I expect more than "it was assumed by many". -Ashley Pomeroy 18:53, 28 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I know too little about the subject to comment on content but the writing is very good. Pascal.Tesson 16:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, another fine piece. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:58, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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