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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose 10:01, 15 August 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang (novel)

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Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang (novel) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s):  — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:07, 31 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because I believe it's ready. Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang (The Rose of Cikembang) is, in my opinion, the most beautiful work of Chinese Malay literature I've read yet. It's the only one I know of which has been translated to English, and it is also one of few Malay-language novels to get a screen adaptation almost fifty years after publication. This article received a GA review from Dwaipayanc and a peer review from J Milburn (as "quick comments"), Sarastro1, and Wehwalt, leaving the prose shining. I have received permission to run this a little early as my other nom nears completion. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:07, 31 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support Had my say at the peer review, seems worthy.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:32, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done


Review by Quadell

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The prose style throughout is excellent. The organization is appropriate, and it covers all aspects of the topic. The images are used appropriately, with good captions, and the lede effectively summarizes all sections of the article. I am left with very little to suggest for improvement. Still, I was able to find a few potential issues.

  • You do not capitalize "eastern" philosophy, though the Eastern philosophy article does. Would it be more standard to capitalize it?
  • You first mention "Sidharta" in the second sentence of "Themes", but later give her full name and link to Myra Sidharta in paragraph 3 of that section.
  • "Sumardjo describes novel" should be "Sumardjo describes the novel".
  • Regarding the final sentence in "Themes", it is unclear whether that is a statement of fact, a statement of Sutedja-Liem's opinion, or Sutedja-Liem's interpretation of Kwee's message to all women.
  • "Suryadinata gives the film as" should probably be "Suryadinata judges the film to be" or "stated that the film wa" or something similar. "Gives as" is a less clear construction.
  • "Modern reviews have been positive" would be better as "Modern reviews of the novel have been positive", since the previous two paragraphs talked about stage and film adaptations.
  • I'm unsure of the need for footnotes [b] and [e] through [i], which give the original language(s) for certain phrases from the article. I assume all are Malay, though Kwee was fluent in many languages, and other reviewers could have been speaking a different language, so the language should be specified if the footnotes are kept. But I'm not sure how they help the reader. It is usually not necessary to give the original language for phrases -- for instance, it was fine to refer to Court Malay as a "language of administration" without giving the Dutch phrase for this. Giving the original language could be useful if there are subtleties that are difficult to translate, but then a word-for-word translation or comparison of possible translations would be useful in a footnote. I don't believe seeing the original language for a phrase, sans commentary, is useful in an English Wikipedia article.
  • Regarding this issue, see WP:NOENG (particularly #Quoting non-English sources). A similar format is used in various scholarly articles on Indonesian literature, including throughout the book of Clearing a Space)
  • Further, footnote [b] raises other questions. The article describes this as being his internal decision, not something he wrote down, so I'm not sure where "original" text would come from. (Footnote 6 indicates that it's from Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang itself, which seems odd.) I can't imagine what criteria would determine which of a person's thoughts should be rendered in Malay as well as English.
  • Original here is not intended, nor has it ever been intended, to indicate the thought process of the author. Instead it is used the same as the other footnotes beginning with "Original", namely to indicate that the quote is shown in its original language (Malay in this instance). This is from Kwee's foreword, and the full sentence is "Saja liat di dalem itu njanjian—jang sebagian ada dimoeat joega dalam pagina 52 dari ini boekoe—ada terdapet stof jang bagoes sekali boeat karang satoe tjerita atau lelakon komedie jang sedih" ("I saw that in said song—which is reproduced in part on page 52 of this book—there was material which was very good for the writing of a sad story or stage play"). I could split the foreword off from the novel proper in the references if you prefer. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:14, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Footnotes [c] and [d] internally reference the source where their information comes from, and in addition, the article cites the same reference in the article body itself right after the footnote marker. Is it necessary to do both? (That's a sincere question; I don't know.) Compare this with footnotes [b] and [e] through [i], which do not internally give the source their information comes from, but instead rely on the reference for the sentence in the article body. I hope my question here is clear; it's difficult to explain what I mean.
  • [c] and [d] are asides (i.e. information which is relevant to the sentence being discussed, but not worth including in the main text) which may or may not be sourced to the same reference as the main text (in Lie Kim Hok, for instance, there is a footnote which combines information from two different sources); as such I've included an in-text reference for these types of footnotes. The others (except [a] which is just to clarify how this article stands among the various forms of Indonesian spelling systems) are the originals of direct quotes, which by definition are from the source provided in-text and thus are not cited again in the footnotes. I've used this style since my first FA, Chrisye, back in March/April 2012 and it's served me well since (Sudirman and Albertus Soegijapranata make heavy use of it). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:14, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

All in all, the article is very good, and I anticipate supporting once these issues are addressed. – Quadell (talk) 19:35, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Follow-up

Everything above is fixed, except for issue involved with footnotes and Kwee (2001) references. I have looked carefully over the WP:V section you mention and all of the examples of FAs you list, and you make some important points, but there are still some legitimate issues with clarity and sourcing here.

  • I like that you split the forewords from the novels -- I think that will be useful for the reader. But could you translate "Permulaan Kata"? Does that mean "foreword" or something similar? 1930b specifies that it is a foreword, but I can't tell that 2001b is.
  • The order in "Works cited" now seems incorrect. Kwee (1930b) splits the two 2001 works. Also, shouldn't 2001a and 1930a be the forewords, coming earlier in their respective texts that the novel itself?
  • It has to be clear where the "original" comes from in your footnotes. In all of your examples in Lie Kim Hok, Sudirman, and Albertus Soegijapranata, it is immediately clear from the article text (not just the reference for the section) what the "original" would be. It is also clear in this article what the "original" would be for footnotes [e] through [i]. The only issue is [b]. I know that this comes from Kwee's introduction, since you've said so at this FAC, but it isn't clear from the context that this is a quote from a later written work. (The reference is several sentences later.) I believe this could be fixed by adding to the beginning of the sentence or paragraph a contextual clue like "As Kwee described much later in an introduction to the novel," or words to that effect.

Great work so far, – Quadell (talk) 13:06, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Spotchecks

This was a very difficult article to spotcheck, since few of the sources are available online and many sources are in Indonesian. But using the online sources, Google Books snippet views, and Google Translate, I was able to confirm refs 2, 3, 38, 39, 40, and 42. In each case, the statement was supported by the source, and in no case was there any plagiarism. In other cases I could at least confirm that the page numbers listed matched up to the general part of the book where the topic was discussed, and for reference 46 I could roughly determine that the statement seemed plausible, given the dense and cryptic executive summary available.

I did find an issue, though: in footnote 38, should the reference to "The Jakarta Post 2012, Remembering" instead say "Ramsay 2012"?

I'm willing to go out on a rather sturdy limb here and confirm that the sourcing seems solid. – Quadell (talk) 21:19, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Agree regarding Ramsay; done. Thanks for the spotcheck, I haven't had one of those in a while. If there are any claims you want me to help you back up, I can provide scans/photographs of the pages in question. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:14, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support. This is fully worthy to be given as listed as a featured article. – Quadell (talk) 15:17, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Support Comments from Jim Very good, just a couple of quibbles before I support. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:47, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • young Chinese man—bit Easter-eggy. I'd prefer "Chinese-Indonesian" or "ethnic Chinese".
  • same traits which made him fall in love with Marsiti, but even more polished—can you polish a trait? Not a big deal if you want to keep.
  • Trying to think of a good wording, an encyclopedic way of saying "all that and more". Marsiti was a good singer, Giok Nio could both sing and play the piano. Both were dedicated wives, but Giok Nio could better entertain guests owing to her higher education (Marsiti, a villager, had no formal education at all). — Crisco 1492 (talk) 15:02, 3 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • This drives Bian Koen to consider suicide and drives Aij Tjeng and Gwat Nio to despair.—over-drive.
  • based on his musings... based on the outline —double-based.
  • Panorama—not sure that there is any point to repeating a redlink.
  • Thanks for the review! I generally treat red links as if they were blue links, so I'd stick with the double redlink (Chinese Malay literature is another one... now that's an article to build on) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 07:05, 4 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support: All my concerns were addressed at the PR, and I think the article has improved further since then so I am happy to support. Sarastro1 (talk) 22:43, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support I like this article because this literature is comefrom Indonesia...--Hanamanteo (talk) 08:08, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • While that unfortunately is not a valid reason for featuring the article, there is sufficient support from other reviewers, based on the FA criteria, to make it so... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:54, 14 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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