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Talk:Beachy Head (poem)/GA1

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GA Review

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Reviewer: Urve (talk · contribs) 07:15, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]


Hi there, I hope to begin reviewing this soon. It looks to be in very good shape. Urve (talk) 07:15, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

  1. Is it well written?
    A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:
    Ambiguity noted below
    B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:
  2. Is it verifiable with no original research?
    A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:
    B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:
    C. It contains no original research:
    Some comments below about whether a claim is interpretive or an uncontestable part of the poem, but easily resolvable I think (almost surely part of the poem and not interpretive)
    D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:
  3. Is it broad in its coverage?
    A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:
    B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):
    One area that may need trimming (or not), see below
  4. Is it neutral?
    It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:
  5. Is it stable?
    It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:
  6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?
    A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:
    B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
    Some fragments end with periods, see below
  7. Overall:
    Pass or Fail:
    Waiting


Composition

  • in poverty due to debt caused by her estranged husband, Benjamin Smith - is this debt incurred by her husband that she had to deal with, or her own debt? if the latter, an explanation for how she came to be in debt could be useful
    • These are debts incurred by her husband, often after they were living separately! It was extremely unjust, but even after she left him (for abusing her), he was legally entitled to the money she earned from her writing. So, I'll leave this as-is. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 23:53, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • MOS:CAPFRAG - should not end with period as a sentence fragment
    • Corrected this, and all the others -- I didn't know about this MOS rule!
  • image is appropriate and PD

Poem

  • image is appropriate with license - MOS:CAPFRAG
  • The poem describes two village children, whose innocence allows them happiness which the speaker compares to her own lost idyllic childhood - reads awkwardly (could just be me); perhaps "The poem describes two village children, whose innocence allows them happiness, and to which the speaker compares her own lost idyllic childhood"
  • any details about the childhood? is the fact that her childhood was idyllic and lost an uncontestable interpretation of the text (in which case no cite is fine), or is it interpretive (in which case a cite may be justified)?
    • I think this would be uncontested. The relevant lines are:
The village girl is happy, who sets forth
To distant fair, gay in her Sunday suit,
With cherry colour'd knots, and flourish'd shawl,
And bonnet newly purchas'd. So is he
Her little brother, who his mimic drum
Beats...
...
I once was happy, when while yet a child
She doesn't really say much about what was happy, just a general idea of innocence. So I think I will tweak the wording slightly to "lost childhood innocence" instead of "lost idyllic childhood" but I don't think a citation is needed. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 23:53, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • He seems to remind the poem's speaker - does he explicitly remind the speaker, or is this an interpretation of the stanza? if the latter, maybe a cite?
    • Hm, he does not explicitly remind her. This is a very confusing point in the poem where she has been talking about a reclusive poet for a while, and then suddenly changes subjects to describe a hermit. I know I've seen the "seems to remind" interpretation somewhere but the important thing is just to make it clear there are two different hermit-type people (since this often confuses students); I've changed to a more neutral, uncontestable wording. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 23:53, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Poetic form

  • good

Poetic speaker

  • The speaker looks at the events at Beachy Head in several perspectives - good writing; this takes into account both the literal and figurative meaning of perspective, I like it
  • Although the speaker mentions having previously been present at Beachy Head, the poem is entirely imagined, narrated as a hypothetical vision of what the speaker might see if they could revisit the landscape - it this an uncontestable interpretation of the poem, or is it an academic view/interpretation? if the latter, a cite would be needed
    • HMM. I have been looking into it, and I now think this is an interpretation, but not one for which I can find a suitable citation. So I think the line might need to be deleted.
The textual evidence in the poem itself, I think, is consistent with the idea that she is imagining everything:
  • The poem begins in the subjunctive and shifts to the present: 'on thy summit I would recline, from there I would see the sunrise, the tide is coming in now, a boat is coming in....'
  • "Ah! hills so early loved! in fancy still / I breathe your pure keen air; and still behold / Those widely spreading views"
  • "Haunts of my youth! / Scenes of fond day dreams, I behold ye yet! / Where 'twas so pleasant"
That kind of thing is all over the poem. To me these read as an indication that she cannot return to this fond place, but is imagining it vividly "in fancy"-- it is a common poetic convention to describe "beholding" something in one's imagination. I can't find any part of the poem that clearly says she is there. But I wrote this line in the article because it is something students often don't catch, which suggests it can be read differently, or at least that this aspect of the poem can be overlooked.
Trying to find a citation, I found several articles that imply/take for granted that she is not there but don't say so outright-- I wouldn't feel comfortable citing them for this idea. And it looks like Kevis Goodman's article assumes she is physically at Beachy Head, since he says in passing that "she is roaming the exact place of her affluent and happy childhood" (Goodman 988). But that is in the context of summing up her biography, not part of his actual interpretation (which doesn't address whether the speaker is seeing or imagining).
What do you think? ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 23:53, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Apostrophe and personification

  • image has appropriate license
  • is this the best placement for the image in your opinion? it's fine for me - could be put under Poetic form or elsewhere, too
  • good

Smith's notes

  • good

Threats of French invasion

  • Beachy Head was considered a likely beachhead for the anticipated French invasion of England - what is a beachhead? wikilink or explanation would be appropriate
  • appropriate image license and use

Romanticism

  • very nice writing

Naturalist approach to nature

  • appropriate image license. I can't tell, possible MOS:CAPFRAG issue
  • The concept of "green language" was defined in Raymond Williams's 1973 monograph The Country and the City as a new way of writing about nature exemplified by William Wordsworth and John Clare, which combines "a deep sensitivity for natural phenomena with forceful environmental advocacy. - seems like too much detail for its own sentence and the scope of the article, could be an endnote or a smaller explanation at the end of the preceding sentence

Pastoral critique of commerce

  • appropriate image and license - MOS:CAPFRAG
  • which is harmful both to humanity and to nature - this is clearly Smith's view but the wording is a bit ambiguous as to whether we are declaring that in wikivoice or not; could be qualified as "which she views as harmful..."
  • good

Human history and geological time

  • image is largely appropriate with appropriate license, but the figure is too small to see as a thumbnail - alternatives?
    • Hmm. Part of what I like about this image is that the figure is so small, it gives a sense of the scale of the cliffs... but they really can't be spotted except in full size. I've cut this image for now, since I couldn't find an alternative I liked better. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 23:53, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • In its frequent descriptions of the stone, the earth, fossilized remains, and buried human remains, the poem is "threaded through by conceptions of a deep earth, of deep time." - this is fairly unclear. what does a deep earth and deep time mean? it's pretty, but I can't really make sense of it

Alternative form of the sublime

  • appropriate image and license - MOS:CAPFRAG
  • beautiful (ha-ha) writing

The doubled hermit figure

Influences

  • appropriate image and license - MOS:CAPFRAG
  • which mirror Milton's description of Creation - how so? if it would be too much detail we don't need to clarify, but it could be helpful to explain why scholars see that mirroring you describe
    • Hm, this particular connection is only weakly described in Goodman, the cited source. Milton: "the mountains huge appear / Emergent, and their broad backs upheave" --> Smith: "when the huge hill / its giant bulk upheaved" (Goodman 997). I don't believe it's a coincidence, since Smith's notes footnote two other allusions to Milton and in general Milton was one of her favourite poets and a constant influence. But it's not very exciting. I have reworded this section to be more modest: "The poem also alludes to John Milton and Oliver Goldsmith, identified in her endnotes." No citation because it's evident in the text itself (she literally footnotes the line and says "Milton" / "Goldsmith"). The poem has a lot of uncited allusions too which I know people have written about but I don't have them to hand at the moment, and I think the article covers the basics of her most important influences. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 23:53, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Reception

Adaptations

  • great

Lead

  • good summary of article
  • image is appropriate and has appropriate licensing
  • infobox says that the meter is iambic pentameter, but this is not in the article anywhere
    • The article says it is "blank verse," which is by definition unrhymed iambic pentameter. "Blank verse" is wikilinked-- do you think it's necessary to spell out the definition in the article"? ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 23:53, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In general

My above comments are things that will be, I hope, easy to address.

There is one major concern that I have about this article, and it is that many of the citations to books lack page numbers. For journal articles that is okay because they have a small range to verify the information, but when we have citations like that to the book "Charlotte Smith: Major Poetic Works" (abt 270 pgs) and "Eighteenth Century Women Poets and their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre" (abt 500 pgs) without any pages in the notes, that poses a big hurdle to verifiability. I don't think this poses a problem for passing GA, but it's possible that the article will get spammed with "page needed" templates and there will be problems at FAC if you take it there.

Pinging Oulfis. Thanks, Urve (talk) 09:11, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for this very thorough review, Urve! I really appreciate your thoughtfulness and attention to detail. I went through all the individual points above, but that turned out to be a lot (mostly me 'thinking out loud'), so as an easier summary, I think these are the things where I'd like your input:
  • Re: "Poetic Speaker", regarding the speaker being physically present: I'm really not sure if this is obvious in the poem, or original research on my part. Do you think I should just delete the sentence?
  • Re: "Human history and geological time," is the reference to "deep time" clearer now?
  • Re: "Lead," if it says "blank verse" in the article, does it also need to say "iambic pentameter"?
Of course, if you disagree with anything in my other reasoning or edits, please let me know. And thank you for the note about page numbers-- I will be sure to go through and source things more specifically if I decide to try for a Featured Article. ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 23:53, 30 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there, Oulfis. You responded very kindly and quickly - appreciated.
  • "Poetic speaker": Personally, I err on the side of inclusion and think that very basic interpretive claims are allowable under GA criteria and general guidelines/policies. I think this is a small enough claim for deletion to not be necessary.
  • Time: Yes, that makes sense.
  • Lead: No. You can tell I never took a poetry class, and all of my literary theory experience is purely in prose -- I thought "blank" meant without a scheme of any kind. Perhaps my college essays have that issue, too. Oops! :)
  • Sidenote about the MOS: At the risk of making the review a soapbox, I find most of the MOS a total waste of time and you are free to ignore it in just about any content creation. Only noted CAPFRAG because it is a common part of image review at FAC that I've seen.
I will be passing this shortly. Congratulations on a well-written article about an important poem. As always - and I think you are aware, but good to be reminded - once an article passes GA, you are free to send it to WP:DYK. Urve (talk) 07:16, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Urve, I'm so pleased it's passed! Thank you, too, for being speedy and friendly :) I'm glad my edits addressed your concerns. And, you are not alone in finding it very easy to mix us the terms "blank verse" and "free verse" (which is probably what you were thinking of), there's nothing in the words "blank" vs "free" which really tells you which one doesn't have a meter. Anyway-- I will nominate at DYK now!! ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 08:06, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Urve and Oulfis - well done on getting this to GA. Urve, your detailed review of the article has been helpful to Oulfis, and you have done a good job, examining and ticking off each GA criteria. Nice one. However, I've just landed on the article, and I note that the lead does not comply with WP:Lead. The lead should be a stand alone summary of the article. What that means is information from each of the following sections should be briefly summarised or at least mentioned in the lead:

  • 3.1 Poetic form
  • 3.2 Poetic speaker
  • 3.3 Apostrophe and personification
  • 3.4 Smith's notes
  • 4.1 Threats of French invasion
  • 4.2 Romanticism
  • 5.1 Naturalist approach to nature
  • 5.2 Pastoral critique of commerce
  • 5.3 Human history and geological time
  • 5.4 Alternative form of the sublime

It actually sounds harder than what it is. But it needs someone to go through and take the important details from each section and make sure they are in the lead so that a reader can come to the article and get a quick overview from the lead; then, if they wish, they can plunge into one or more sections to get more detailed information.

I also note from a glance at the reference section that many of the cites do not have page numbers. This is not actually a GA requirement, but page numbering is now standard practice. I see that Urve brought it up in the review, but that was not followed through. Oulfis, are you able to go back to your sources and find the page numbers?

Oh. Now that I'm looking at the article, other things are popping up. More queries than concerns really. There are a lot of short sub-sections - per MOS:OVERSECTION we tend to discourage over use of small sections. As a rough rule of thumb, if a subsection is only one paragraph then it is more likely to be just a standard paragraph than a subsection. I would suggest that all the subsections in the Style section could be removed to the benefit of the appearance and readability of the article. I also noticed in the caption to the image of Beachy Head there is a mention of the "chalk cliffs", though there is no mention of chalk in the article - indeed, the only other mention of chalk is in another caption: "A spondylus fossilized in chalk" - there are mentions of fossils and of shells in the article, but not of chalk or a spondylus. Captions are intended to both describe the picture, and to provide information on how the picture relates to the article.

I think you've both done a great job. And what I'm mentioning are just small things. However, I think it's worth pushing a little bit further just to clear up those few untidy bits. Would you like me to work with you, and perhaps look a bit deeper into the article? SilkTork (talk) 13:17, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

More can always be done, and I take your point about chalk, which I didn't catch. But otherwise, I honestly disagree about the lead and section sizing. The lead seems to me an appropriate overview of the topic without placing undue emphasis on the academic interpretations of a few scholars who are cited for a few details; the only other information I would see fit to include would be historical background but that seems apparent. And for subsections, the topics are pretty distinct so it would seem to me fairly confusing, even with great prose, to present the information in running commentary. Urve (talk) 13:35, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
OK. No worries. SilkTork (talk) 16:32, 2 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry if I came across as critical. More thought makes me think we should address this a bit, especially making the lead a bit longer. I'll make a few edits when I'm available or the nominator can as well. Urve (talk) 08:29, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Cool. I've made a start. SilkTork (talk) 09:52, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for taking such a close look at this article and making some edits, SilkTork. I agree especially about expanding the lead. I simply hadn't noticed how much longer the article had gotten since I first wrote the lead! I appreciate your expansions and will think about adding more / refining (though possibly not for a bit). I also take your point about the chalk; I added a note in the synopsis.
The page numbers I also agree with as a concern while also not intending to address it at this time. A lot of the material is from an editathon, which as that old edit shows, included direct quotes from the sources but usually without page numbers. When I summarized that material, I did not go back to the original source to verify the quotation & find its page number: frankly, it seemed unnecessary, because these were clearly good faith edits made with the source in hand, and none of the material raised any red flags based on my memory of the sources from when I read them a few years ago. Looking through the list, there are about 4-5 books that I no longer have access to and the rest are either article or books available digitally, so it would be merely annoying to bring the page numbers up to 90%, and then truly onerous to get to 100%. I could do it, but I confess it simply does not excite me; I will certainly do so before thinking of FAC, but right now it doesn't feel like a very meaningful use of my time.
As to section sizing -- I think I slightly disagree about what makes a wiki article "readable," or at least I much prefer sections that are too short over those which are too long. The short sections are probably also an artefact of my editing process: they were all plenty long when I started... But I made some edits in the "style" section. The other one-paragraph sections are "Romanticism," "Alternative form of the sublime," and "The doubled hermit figure." Romanticism & the sublime are key frameworks for understanding this poem so those sections could easily be expanded, I was just trying to get some basics in place; I prefer to leave them as their own sections and let them grow. The hermit section I'm not so sure about. Mostly I think it's important to clarify that there are two hermits, and people do pay a lot of attention to them, but maybe it could be tied in somewhere else... the hermit could be folded in to the pastoral section? And the sublime could actually combine with the geological time section? Both would require thoughtful prose revisions, I think, to make sense (the word "sublime" definitely has to be in the section title), and I personally prefer them as their own sections, but if it's important not to have such short sections, that would be a way to do so.
Thanks again for your help making this article better! ~ oulfis 🌸(talk) 20:12, 3 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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