Talk:Fontamara

Article creation

I was amazed to find that this novel did not have an article on English-language Wikipedia. I have tried to rectify this, although it is mostly a machine translation from the Italian. Anyone who can help with this, please do. My Italian is not completely up to it!!! --MacRusgail (talk) 14:08, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I will try to clean up the translation. Many parts of the translation don't make sense (but now I know that it is a machine translation). I am reading the book and will adapt it once I have finished it. - --152.3.207.57 (talk) 14:40, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, I look forward to it. --MacRusgail (talk) 18:20, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

You shouldn't have done this. Machine translations are not an accepted way to add content from other wikipedias, as with this article they are very poor and we are no better off. If you want to add content from other wikipedias, you should do so in your own userspace until it is ready to be an article, or if you don't intend to make any effort then you shouldn't create it at all--Jac16888^Talk 17:09, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

In addition the content I removed, which you just blindly re-added was entirely original research and unsourced, so I suggest you remove it again.--Jac16888^Talk 17:46, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

My God, Wikipedia is full of self-appointed high heid yins these days and hell mend you. What good did that actually achieve? One of the most important Italian novels of the twentieth century, and no one can be bothered to write an article in English on it?! I have been trying to improve and widen the scope of Wikipedia for years. Don't give me "original research" - I didn't write the original text.

"if you don't intend to make any effort then you shouldn't create it at all" - The only decent reply to patronising rubbish like that comes in four letter packages. Find something CONSTRUCTIVE to do. Better still, why don't you help improve this article? Either improve it or go and vandalise some other article.--MacRusgail (talk) 17:51, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Just because you didn't write the content doesn't make it original research, it is clearly an analysis of the book and is unsourced, therefore its original research. As for being constructive, I don't consider copy and pasting this from the italian wikipedia then running it through a translator constructive, had you bothered to do any research before you jumped if you would have found WP:Translation, which is the correct procedure for translating articles from other wikipedias and which clearly states that a machine translation is worse than nothing. You haven't made wikipedia better here you've made it worse. One final thing, this entire article is a copyright violation as you have not attributed it properly, i suggest you correct that--Jac16888^Talk 18:01, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

God save us from Philistines and self-made bureaucrats and all combinations of the two...

"You haven't made wikipedia better here you've made it worse." - Apart from the fact that there was NO article whatsoever on this topic. Never mind, I doubt you'd even heard of Silone before anyway.--MacRusgail (talk) 18:43, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Have you ever actually turned a machine translated article into a proper one? I have, and its really difficult, it is in fact much easier to translate it from the original language even when you don't know the language that well. Had you thought it through you would realise that a much better way to create this article would be to create a short simple stub then work on expanding it--Jac16888^Talk 18:56, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I have. But a short article along the lines of "X is a 19xx novel by John Doe" is useless as well. So far B.A. attention from those who could improve on the translation. --MacRusgail (talk) 19:05, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

You're unlikely to get much help translating this because it will require so much effort. A one line article would be more useful than this since its almost entirely garbled gibberish right now--Jac16888^Talk 19:08, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

So, out of the kindness of your heart, you will agree to help convert it into decent English then? --MacRusgail (talk) 21:16, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

snide comments aside, I'll do what I can--Jac16888^Talk 21:41, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Possible ref

[1] This appears to be a review of the book by Trotsky, which I'm sure could be used in the article in some way--Jac16888^Talk 21:44, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Editing

Hello, as you can see I have completely revamped this article. It was previously a brief, machine translated article, without references. I translated and reordered some of what was here before but the majority of it is my own or from sources which i have referenced. I am continually contributing and would appreciate help on content. If someone would proof-read what I have written and give feedback on my writing style and content that would be great.

I plan to: -finish chapter summaries for the whole book and tidy up my plot section -complete character summaries on Innocenzo la Legge, Don Achille Pazienza, Baldissera, Elvira, Donna Clorinda, Maria Rosa, La Zappa, Marietta, L’Avezzanese o Solito sconosciuto, Maria Grazia, la Ciammaruga, Filomena, Castagna, la Recchiuta, la figlia di Cannarozzo, Maria Cristina -create a section on relevant criticism. -create a themes section

I am publishing as I go because this was intended to be a student group project so it is important that everyone can see what others have done, though at present it seems I am the only one contributing! Thanks, (Cutiekatie (talk) 16:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)).

While your work improving the article is great, there are several issues. First of all, theplot and character sections are far too excessive considering they're not even finished, see here and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction) for guidance on how the article should be set out. Second you need to make more use of external sources for references, see Wikipedia:Verifiability, particularly in the anaylsis parts of the article, much or which appears to be your own work. The article should talk about more than just the story of the book, it should include things such as its real-world impact, how it was received etc. This is why i included the link to a review by Trotsky above, because even it is inaccurate as you say, the fact that a man as well known as him has given it a review should be worth including. You might find the resources and editors at Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels to be of use to you, you will also find links there to some the projects best articles about novels as an idea of how the article should be looking--Jac16888 ^Talk 19:22, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for this advice! I completely agree! I've put in a 'plot overview' section now - I agree that that is much better. I'd appreciate your opinion on it - is it still too detailed?. My plot section was quite overwhelming i agree. What do you think about me doing 'plot by chapter'? For our purposes as students it would be useful, though I appreciate that kind of content is not always the point of wikipedia. Equally - the characters section is something thats useful as a student but I agree I should cut it down. Part of the bulk of character section is the quotes in Italian - which I put in there because at present I have no-one to double check my translation - and though I am 99% confident on them I didn't want to be misleading. I might delete them though, what do you think? I will look into writing a section on how it has been received and such. It is a very well-known novel so hopefully there will be lots to say there. Thank you for the help and support (Cutiekatie (talk) 21:41, 9 May 2011 (UTC))

The plot overview section is excellent, and could probably be a bit longer, but you don't need a chapter by chapter breakdown, that would be too excessive, and the characters you might want to consider if the italian quotes are needed at all. The biggest problem however is still the lack of references, I see you just added a section of analysis but most of that is ref'd to the book itself, which is only good as a primary source, for that kind of content you need 3rd party references otherwise its just your own research, and also you can't use wikipedia as a reference. You might want to take a look at articles like La Peau de chagrin or Le Père Goriot, or any of these, they are featured articles about novels, that means they are considered to be the best articles on wikipedia, and should give you an idea of what to aim for.--Jac16888 ^Talk 00:19, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your work CK. I think (English) Wikipedia has needed a decent article on this major Italian novel for years. --MacRusgail (talk) 16:25, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Hello! Yes, it seems that references are an eternal problem for wikipedia but I am slowly but surely doing what I can. Thanks for your advice Jac. Not sure I can ever make it to the feature article standard but I can but try! Obviously this is ongoing project and me editing every five minutes makes matters a bit confusing, but I am not going to be contributing for a maybe a week and I was wondering if in this time you would mind proofreading what's there at the moment for me? I have made changes to the introduction, added a (under-construction) section on world reaction and reviews - including that Trotsky review :), added a couple of pictures - one of which has been tagged as needing to be resized but I don't understand how to do that, i've made a couple of minor changes to some character sections in the interest of adding 3rd party sources but nothing particularly noteworthy, and i've added a little military publication section. I'm planning to extend my world reaction section, add lots more refs for characters, and critics opinions of the text, and i want to change that section on the southern question - it was partly translated from the italian page and I think a distinction needs to be made between the peasant/city divide and the north/south divide, especially as Silone based the book on events which in actual fact happened in the north of Italy. I am also going to add a general section on fascism once i've done that because, obviously, that is a major theme. I would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks, (Cutiekatie (talk) 20:10, 14 May 2011 (UTC))