Talk:Mark Twain/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Curly Turkey (talk · contribs) 05:41, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

An important article that really deserves a lot of attention. I find this article still needs a lot of work, though. I haven't looked carefully at the prose yet or checked the sources; there are a lot of areas that need to be worked on first.

Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose quality:
- punctuation in quotations doesn't conform to MOS:QUOTEMARKS.
- far too many overshort and one-sentence paragraphs
- ordering of information seems erratic. As an example, why does "Twain created a reverent portrayal of Joan of Arc, a subject over which he had obsessed for forty years, studied for a dozen years and spent two years writing. In 1900 and again in 1908, he stated, "I like Joan of Arc best of all my books, it is the best."" come where it does? It seems neither to follow neither logically nor chronologically from the preceding text.
B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:
- Several very short sections that likely don't warrant it; for instance, "Labor", "Vivisection"
- sections like "Anti-imperialist" should be renamed to "Anti-imperialism", if indeed they warrant their own sections
- There's a big gap after the second paragraph of "Travels"
Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
A. Has an appropriate reference section:
B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary:
- Large number of paragraphs without inline citations; for instance, almost the entire "Love of science and technology" section.
- More care needs to be taken with citation formatting e.g. italics; for example, [39] Paine, A. B., Mark Twain: A Biography, Harper, 1912 page 1095; in the "Further reading" section, some ISBNs are in parentheses, others aren't, and at least one isn't preceded by "ISBN"
- bare urls such as [41] http://www.twainquotes.com/19010510.html
C. No original research:
Is it broad in its coverage?
A. Major aspects:

B. Focused:
Is it neutral?
Fair representation without bias:
Is it stable?
No edit wars, etc:
Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:
B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
- Lots of images, although there are some long imageless sections
Overall:
Pass or Fail:
After a week, virtually nothing has been done to address any of the issues the article has, so I've regrettably had to fail it. Curly Turkey (gobble) 12:14, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Outside comment

Just wanted to agree with Curly Turkey's assessment so far, but also to mention another issue that bothers me about this article--why the very long section for the friendship with Henry H. Rogers? Twain's wife, in comparison, gets only a paragraph; his children are mentioned only in passing; his much more famous friendship with Grant is not even mentioned (only the selling of grants memoirs); the writing of Huckleberry Finn gets a single paragraph. The sources for the section are very weak--a reference to the primary source of the letters, a Norfolk Pilot article, etc.

Barring evidence that biographers have considered this friendship one of the 3 or 4 most important aspects of Twain's life, I'd think all this material about Rogers could be reduced to a sentence or two (if even that). -- Khazar2 (talk) 05:08, 13 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Having gotten no objections, I've removed this section. -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:23, 19 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]