Talk:Ali's Smile

Not approp for Novels WikiProject

[1] - Not approp for Novels WikiProject - reliable sources do not refer to the works as a "novel", and the bulk of the writing is nonfiction. Cirt (talk) 10:54, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Awadewit (talk) 21:06, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

GA review

This article had a GA review and was successfully promoted as a GA. See Talk:Ali's Smile: Naked Scientology/GA1. Cirt (talk) 22:31, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Questions

• Burroughs is described by a quote: "In April 1970, Burroughs "started a controversy going by publishing an attack on the psychiatry profession and related fields such as Scientology".[29]" Since psychiatry is not a field related to Scientology, what on earth is meant by this? Is the quote describing the mixed up thinking of Burroughs (as is implied) or by someone else who doesn't know what they are talking about? Is Burroughs really confused about the difference between psychiatry (which has been attacked by Scientology) and Scientology? This is a very murky quotation and needs further explanation. It is not even a well worded quotation ("started a controversy going ...").
• "Suppose Newton had founded a Church of Newtonian physics and refused to show his formula to anyone who doubted the tenets of Newtonian physics? ... It's like a physicist saying 'you can't see my formulae unless you first agree that they are correct sight unseen.'"[27] If this quote is by someone else, it is quite inaccurate. If it is by Burroughs, it is not a good example of clear, insightful thinking, as many religious and fraternal organizations keep aspects secret. Is this just Burroughs trashing Scientology?
• First (topic) sentence from article: "Ali's Smile: Naked Scientology is a collection of essays and a short story by Beat writer William S. Burroughs (1914–97)." It is unclear to me, even after reading the article, whether the book contained content other than the anti-Scientology diatribes described. It sounds like there was a publication of the book that did contain only the anti-Scientology stuff, but the first publication contained other material? It is confusing in the article, as the article body does not detail other content.
• The article contains way too many quotations, the meaning of which is unclear or misleading. It would be an improvement of an editors clarified the quote by putting them in their own words. Without knowing the context of the quotes, this article is difficult to penetrate. Would it not be better to quote Burroughs, rather than quote the agenda of other writers regarding Burroughs? Also, is there no range of opinions on Burroughts. Should not the article describe a variety of opinions, or did the opinions originate only from a narrow group of critics?
• Since Burroughs is a writer, why is there no discussion of his literary style?
• Google brings up this article title Ali's Smile: Naked Scientology only for this Wikipedia article. Amazon and others call it Ali's Smile / Naked Scientology. Regards, —Mattisse (Talk) 14:08, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

1. I made this a bit clearer [2].
2. This is Cooper quoting Burroughs.
3. The majority of the book actually does consist of non-fiction essays, most of which is critical of Scientology.
4. It's usually best to quote a bit from secondary sources, rather than primary sources where possible, to avoid WP:OR.
5. Secondary sources generally don't get into too much analysis of Burroughs' literary style with regard to this particular work, I suppose we could provide some general background, but that would be more appropriate in the article William S. Burroughs.
6. There are multiple different book titles used in secondary sources, I believe this is the one from the most recent publication.Cirt (talk) 14:31, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• Why to you have Cooper quoting Burroughs, rather than quote Burroughs directly. This is taking quotes out of context and introducing the view point of another, introducing bias. Your logic about quoting an author's words via secondary sources is less OR than quoting (presumably) the same words from the author directly does not avoid OR. This reminds me of a recent discussion in which the secondary source incorrectly quoted the primary source, so the secondary source was accepted as a more accurate version of the author's words than the primary source, the author's words themselves.
• I guess I will Google the book to figure out what is actually in it, as this article is not clear. Per the topic sentence, as noted above, it is implied the book is wide ranging in content.
• I don't want to hurt your feelings, but this is not a very clear or understandable article, and I am surprised and disappointed that it is considered to fulfill the GA criteria. —Mattisse (Talk) 14:45, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

1. The alternative would be to have the entire article simply be individual Wikipedians' views and interpretations of the book itself, with selected quotes from the book, which would indeed be a violation of WP:NOR. Best to rely instead on secondary sources.
2. As the topic sentence says, as noted above, the book is a collection of non-fiction essays, along with a fictional short story.
3. Please, if you could come up with specific ways to change something or even better, additional useful secondary sources that we have not come across, that would be much more helpful than generalized complaints. Cirt (talk) 14:51, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• Well, I am just now reading the book on the web, and I am finding that the first chapter, "Burroughs on Scientology" is not even mainly about Scientology. In fact, is is almost entirely an anti-psychiatry diatribe. Somehow, this article doesn't notice this. Did the article's editors read Burrough's book, or just select reviews of it that concentrated on Scientology? Did anyone actually look at the content of the book the article describes? Perhaps they were fooled by the title and thought the book was mostly about Scientology, when it appears that Scientology is only the shell used by the author to write about a variety of topics he is against. It is ironic that psychiatry, that has been attacked vigorously by Scientology, is actually the main target of Burroughs. This is not mentioned in the article. —Mattisse (Talk) 15:05, 5 May 2009 (UTC).

I believe you are referring to a portion of the first essay where Burroughs is quoting from a Scientology publication that is critical of psychiatry. Cirt (talk) 15:14, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Article is extremely misleading

I urge anyone reading this article to actually read the book. This article in no way conveys the nature of the content nor the style of writing of the book. The article is apparently a selection of statements of others about the book that present a very misleading picture. —Mattisse (Talk) 15:26, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

In our research in improving the quality of this article we have pretty much exhausted usage of WP:RS secondary sources that discuss the book and/or Burroughs' experiences with Scientology. If you could suggest other WP:RS sources to incorporate, it would be most appreciated. Cirt (talk) 15:31, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• I notice that you quote directly from Burroughs for portions of the article, portions that are either neutral (regarding the short story, where you don't seem to feel a need for secondary sources to prevent OR) or portions that are anit-Scientology. I think you could be much more even handed in your selections of what to quote.
• Further, this is an article on a major writer's work. There is no discussion on the quality of the writing, nor evaluation of the writing style, a major flaw that should have prevented GA status alone. Too bad that it is GA, as I work to try to keep such misleading and POV articles out of GA. But Wikipedia is not perfect. —Mattisse (Talk) 15:48, 5 May 2009 (UTC)