Talk:Bobby Driscoll

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Bobby Driscoll was a Media and drama good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 29, 2012	Good article nominee	Not listed

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Untitled

What is missing, what is dispensable? Any advice and tip to make this article better will be appriciated.

Well, certainly never include a link to your talk page as some kind of 'official' or otherwise discussion center for an article. I have removed such a link in this article. Thanks. Ref ^(chew)(do) 20:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That was in the very beginning, when I was still too unexperienced with the Wikipedia-system. - Sorry. --Bylot (talk) 04:50, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some suggestions

I saw this article has been recently listed at WP:GAC, and although I don't wan to commit doing a full review at the moment, I thought I would leave some suggestions to help improve its chances against the criteria. Great work so far!

Citations need to be formatted correctly. See WP:CITE#HOW for help. You can use templates if you wish (I personally find that they help), but it's not mandatory. What's important is that necessary information such as publisher, publication date, retrieval/access date, author, etc. are listed and formatted consistently. Ref 1 ("Des Moines Register - Famous Iowans") should therefore appear as: "Famous Iowans". Des Moines Register. Retrieved on August 25, 2008. More info can be found at WP:CITE/ES.
The lead seems fragmentary and mainly covers the aspect of his career. Per WP:LEAD, some of his personal life (his family, where he was from, relationships, etc) should be included. I also suggest combining some of the sentences to make a few complete paragraphs.
Although some instances of [[year in film]] may be helpful, it's not necessary to link every year mentioned in this way. See WP:OVERLINK; I suggest cutting some.
WP:QUOTE states that blockquotes should be used only for quotes longer than four lines. All quotes that use the cquote2 template are shorter than this and should therefore be integrated into the prose.
The "Literature" section is confusing; were these titles used as sources? If they were, rename the section to "References". Also, they need to be formatted correctly. Again, WP:CITE/ES may be helpful here.

Some specific concerns:

Just skimming the prose, I see a few instances in which weasel words may be a problem: "successful" in the lead, "lonely" in the header "Lonely death", and so on. Both of the aforementioned examples can be removed since the context already establishes this fact; he was an Academy Award winning actor and he died alone. "He appeared in some of the Walt Disney Company's most famous live-action pictures..." is another example that can be toned down a bit. "...in some of the Walt Disney Company's most popular live-action pictures of the day"? Be on the look out for other examples.
When a doctor advised Cletus to relocate to balmy California, due to pulmonic ailments he suffered from his work-related handling with asbestos, the family moved to the vicinity of Los Angeles, where Bobby was discovered during a routine haircut when the barber, attracted by the boy's cute face, urged his parents to try to get him into the movies. Run-on sentence.
Originally, the working title of the film was Uncle Remus... etc. I'm not convinced that this information, while interesting and notable in regards to the film, is important here. Other than the change of the title, did it have an impact on Driscoll? If not, I suggest removing it; it's also uncited for the most part.
Treasure Island was, finally, Disney's first all live-action picture. I see a few superfluous "finally"s throughout the article, so this is only one example. In most circumstances the word is not needed.

I hope these comments help, and again I'm sorry I wasn't able to complete a full review at this time. Best of luck during the GA review and just let me know on my talk page if you have any questions. María (habla conmigo) 17:27, 25 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Maria.

Thanks a lot for your precious advices. I will definitely go through each of your items/paragraphs to get the article into a shape to equal the status of at least a GA-rating.

I briefly browsed your profile on your talk page and found that one branch of your anchestors are Germans. I am German too, and that's why my prose is a bit different than your are certainly familiar with. Although written with the editing (proofreading) help from a befriended writer from Minnesota (the one who wrote the biographic essay on my Tribute website for Bobby), the basis of this article is mine. But (unfornutaly) my old friend is more a poet than a jounalist and thus, tending to write rather narrative and admiring than factual. That's why you still can find so many "finally"s and other "peackocks" within the text. I was in a real difficult situation, getting the current version through against his (understandable) enthusiastic but often disturbing meddling. He is a fan of Bobby since his own early teens and even tried to meet him personally in the mid-1950s. So I can't really accuse him for his different oppinions and attitudes, concerning particular text passages, formed in more than half a century. Howsoever, he was and still is a great help and assistance in my research for Bobby. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bylot (talk • contribs) 20:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Use of first name

Please change all instances of Bobby to Driscoll, per manual of style guidelines. It doesn't matter whether he was a child or not. -- how do you turn this on 11:44, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Requested citations

Before citing, the last quote, requested (Bosley Crowther - The window, 1949) I first have to pick it out of my "press-archive" on Bobby Driscoll, what may take a little while.

Regards --Bylot (talk) 17:41, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Replaced the Bosley Crowther quote by quoting the original New York Times Review via www.nytimes.com --Bylot (talk) 21:16, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

References

I don't doubt the references to newspaper articles are all valid, but the links all redirect to the same site (www.oyla20.de) with no apparent relevance. Wilus (talk) 17:31, 3 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi - this is simply, because most of the newspaper-"references" in shape of scanned original-accounts were once located on my former website on Bobby Driscoll, but which I deleted, though. I frankly don't know why the blank pages on oyla.de still appear. Regards--Bylot (talk) 17:35, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

In that case the links are all broken and should really be deleted, unless you've re-mounted the site somewhere else. The references themselves are OK since they're mainly to mainstream newspapers which I see are considered reliable sources by Wikipedia. Wilus (talk) 13:52, 21 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Bobby Driscoll/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: MathewTownsend (talk · contribs) 01:12, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Will start the review shortly! MathewTownsend (talk) 01:12, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

References

There is something very wrong with the references - unless its my browser or something. Of the ones I checkes:
ref 2 has no content
ref 3 has no content
ref 4 has no content
ref 5 has no content
ref 6 has no content
ref 7 has no content
ref 8 has no content
ref 9 needs formating
ref 11 has no content
ref 12 - a fan site
ref 13 has no content
ref 14 has no content
ref 16 has no content
ref 19 has no content
ref 20 has no content
ref 21 has no content
ref 23 bad link - also not formatted correctly
ref 24 fan site
ref 26 has no content
ref 27 has no content
ref 29 has no content
ref 30 has no content
[please check the rest - as I went no further except for ref 65 below]
ref 65 is 404

MathewTownsend (talk) 23:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi MathewTownsend

At first: thanks a lot for reviewing this article -- so fast.

Your browser is fine, the broken links are because the references, linked in the article, once had been scanned and put on a website on Bobby Driscoll, which I ran from 2007- ca. mid-2009. But basically due to tightened and stricter copyright laws in Germany (I am from Germany), back then, I deleted the entire website. But the sources are still reliable (mainstream press etc.) - please read the comment (and my reply) just one above - Most of the original press-material I took from the newspaper-archive of anchestry.com.

Now we have two options: either you suspend reviewing the aricle, giving me the time to re-upload the material on a neutral (and unlisted) website, in order to re-create the references/sources, or I temporarily withdraw the GA-assessment, with the same purpose. Frankly, I didn't expect the review this fast, since I read in the rules, that it can take some weeks until someone would find the time. But it would be very nice, anyway, if you could tell me your opinion, so I can concurrently revise the points in question. I guess, I was a bit too fast with my request for assessing the article. I'm really sorry for this inconvenience.

Best regards --Bylot (talk) 14:27, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind waiting, if you need time. I believe a nomination can't be withdrawn once a review is opened but must be failed. Either option is ok with me. Leaving it open a while is not a problem.

But you can't upload copies of newspaper articles to a site, as that is violating the newspaper's copyright. You can provide the correct reference to each newspaper article without a link (eg author, date, newspaper, etc.), much like providing a citation to a book where there is no link, just the info needed to find that info in the book, page no. etc. The article and info on Bobby Driscoll is really interesting and I'd like to see this become a GA. I'm willing to help you any way I can. MathewTownsend (talk) 15:23, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for your patience and assistance.

My idea was also, to add light copyright-watermarks on the scans, needed, to credit the sources "properly" and prevent the press-material of possible misuse

But if it's enough to simply put the links into informational references (since the basic data are mostly provided there, already), as I understand your suggestion, I think, it will not take longer than a week. Best wishes and greetings --Bylot (talk) 16:04, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reply

Here's an example of citing a newspaper article without a link

Frankenstein, Alfred (June 9, 1940). "Diverse Attractions at the Golden Gate Fair". The New York Times.
This is from Timothy L. Pflueger - MathewTownsend (talk) 17:32, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Failed. None of the missing references have been fixed. MathewTownsend (talk) 23:40, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion to include link to the song "Farewell, Never Never Land" by Tom Russell on his album "Mesabi" issued in 2011 which is a song about Bobby Driscoll. FlaviusHoratius (talk) 02:51, 12 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

DOD should be circa?

March 30th is the day his body was found. He may have been dead for a while. Perhaps it should use "circa". Jason Quinn (talk) 23:26, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

nominate for deletion

for the obvious reason of no verifiable references — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.140.183.239 (talk) 22:17, 22 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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I think

I think the introductory paragraph is too lurid and tabloidesque. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.225.36.101 (talk) 23:52, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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MIstake

"The Window" was NOT a Disney Production. It was made by RKO studios. 174.119.232.111 (talk) 15:37, 24 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks... I've fixed it. -Jason A. Quest (talk) 18:36, 24 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]