Talk:Mark Twain House/GA1

GA Reassessment

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GA Sweeps: On hold

As part of the WikiProject Good Articles, we're doing Sweeps to determine if the article should remain a Good article. I went through the article and made various changes, please look them over. I believe the article currently meets the majority of the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. However, in reviewing the article, I have found there are several issues that needs to be addressed.

1. "While in Connecticut, the family remarked "[the house] had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with."" A citation is needed for the quote. Do the same for "Twain had said "There ought to be a room in this house to swear in" and "It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.""
2. "Twain played with his children in the conservatory, pretending to be an elephant in an imaginary safari." This may be one of my weirdest GA review questions, but how often was he pretending to be an elephant? The sentence reads as if he was always doing this whenever he played with his children.
3. "This was known to have caused marked uproar among the northeastern Missouri intelligentsia." Address the "citation needed" tag.
4. Is File:Billiardsroom.jpg needed for the article? There are already several free images, including two of the interior. I don't think a non-free image is needed of the room.
5. "Restoration and preservation at the Mark Twain House helped bring the house and grounds back to the years between 1881 and 1891, when the Twains most loved the house." Did the Twains specifically say that they loved the house during this time? If so, it should quoted and it stated that they said so.
6. "The home today contains 50,000 artifacts: manuscripts, historic photographs, family furnishings, and Tiffany glass." This would benefit with a source.
7. "With the number of admissions leveling off around 53,000..." Is this total? Or monthly/annually? The other figures in this section should be clarified as well.
8. "The center is a $16.3 million, 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m2) facility that will house artifacts from the museum's collection that cannot now be shown in the house itself." "...that will..." Has the center been built yet? If so this should be updated. Clarify for the remaining sentences in the paragraph.
9. In the lead it is mentioned that Twain wrote many of his novels in the home. This isn't mentioned in the article, try and expand on this. Other details are also not mentioned (such as 19 rooms). Assume that the reader may skip the lead and ensure all of the lead's details are included in the article somewhere.
10. The article has multiple dead links that need to be fixed. The Internet Archive can help.

This article covers the topic well. I will leave the article on hold for seven days, but if progress is being made and an extension is needed, one may be given. If no progress is made, the article may be delisted, which can then later be renominated at WP:GAN. I'll contact all of the main contributors and related WikiProjects so the workload can be shared. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 07:17, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not particularly invested in this article but I'll make a few edits in the next couple days. One point I'd like to make: I believe the billiard room image is important to the article and would continue to support its use, despite no free use alternative. The room is very indicative of the home, Twain, and is a significant "finale" to the tour for those who attend. It's a shame the quality is so low... --Midnightdreary (talk) 17:54, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

I found and added a citation for "There ought to be a room ...". I also found one for "[the house] had a heart, ...", but since Midnightdreary had already removed the quote, I didn't bother to add it back in. If someone else thinks it's important enough to include, the citation can be found by doing a search for the quote at Google Books. --sanfranman59 (talk) 02:15, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to add it back in. I'm no expert on Twain or his house but a quick perusal of a couple works that discuss it make me uneasy about keeping this as GA right now. There's a lot of information missing and, perhaps more importantly, a fair amount of incorrect information. I fixed some of it but, due to my lack of expertise, I may not be able to identify all of it. One example is that Twain moved to Stormfield, a home built for him in Redding, CT. It actually was someone else's house, not built for Twain. That's just one example, and I note that it's in the lede but isn't mentioned anywhere else (the lede is a real issue on this one). I'm not yet confident that we can salvage this as a GA without extensive work. --Midnightdreary (talk) 02:44, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Some progress was made this week in addressing the issues. I struck through the completed ones, but there are still some remaining. I will leave the article on hold for another week for the remaining issues to be addressed. If you need help with anything, let me know. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 21:07, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps: Delisted

The article has been on hold for another week and no other improvements were made. As a result I have delisted the article as it still has a way to go before meeting the GA criteria. Continue to improve the article, addressing the issues above. Once they are addressed, please renominate the article at WP:GAN. I look forward to seeing the further improvement of the article, and don't hesitate to contact me if you need assistance with any of these. If you disagree with this review, a community consensus can be reached at WP:GAR. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 00:30, 23 July 2009 (UTC)