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Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Tintin in the Land of the Soviets/archive1

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Comments.

  • "the only one of the completed twenty-three Tintin adventures": I think "twenty-three completed" would be a more natural word order.
Sorted.(Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC))[reply]
  • You have "due to" three times in two sentences in the last paragraph of the lead.
Sorted.(Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC))[reply]
  • In the Influences and Analysis section, you have "ideologically Marxist-Leninist Bolshevik party"; is "ideologically" needed here?
Sorted.(Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC))[reply]
  • This is a minor point, but I suggest trimming the caption to the election picture -- much of it duplicates the text. My preference would be to give enough of the information to ensure the reader understands this is the picture referred to in the text; e.g. 'The "chilling" election scene from Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.'
  • You have "subsequently" twice in two sentences in the Publication section.
Sorted.(Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC))[reply]
  • Also in that section, I think it confuses the reader to say it "began" serialization; it implies it never was completed. I'd rephrase to say it was "serialized, beginning on" or something along those lines.
  • I am somewhat concerned by the relative proportion of quoted text; I don't think I've seen an FA candidate with this much direct quotation. Some of it is justified, for example Hergé description of the text as a "transgression of my youth" is a great quote, and the Lofficier & Lofficier quote at the end of the background section, while long, seems informative, hard to paraphrase, and useful to the reader in direct quotation. But do we need Hergé's own words on Catholicism meaning the devouring of Bolsheviks, or multiple quotes all saying Totor metamorphosed into Tintin, or Thompson's verbatim description of Belgian suburbia? I think the article would be better if these points of view and comments were integrated into the article's own narrative text. Do you feel these quotes are high value?
Removed or paraphrased many of these quotes.(Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC))[reply]
  • Three of the four non-free images are used for illustration purposes only. The one showing the Bolsheviks forcing people to vote is legitimate, because of the accompanying discussion, and though I'm not knowledgeable about fair use I think one more might be OK for visual identification. I don't think we can argue for all the other three, though -- it only take one picture to give us the image of Tintin, and the Bolshevik one also illustrates the style, so there's little additional understanding gained by the reader from the others.
  • I have prose concerns. The prose isn't bad, but it has some flaws that I think need a copyeditor. For example, just in the plot section there is quite a bit of repetitive construction. Examples:
    • " Departing from Brussels, his train is ..."
    • "Brought before the local Commissar's office, the same OGPU agent that tried to kill Tintin on the train secretly instructs ..."
    • "Falling into the sewers, he is ..."
    • "Threatened with torture by two Chinamen, he again escapes ..."
    • "Reaching Moscow ... he witnesses ..."
    • "Then sneaking into a secret meeting of a group of Bolsheviks, he discovers ..."
  • I also think there is some imprecise writing. Just one example: "After creating his character of Tintin, Hergé wanted to send him on an adventure to the United States, where he could meet with Native Americans, a people whom Hergé himself had been fascinated by since being a boy scout (something he would be able to achieve with his third Tintin adventure, Tintin in America)": the parenthesis here doesn't grammatically connect with the first part of the sentence. The intended meaning is, I think, that Hergé would achieve a meeting with Native Americans, but "something" is actually looking back to the last clause, not the second one, since "he" refers to Hergé. I won't try to give a list, but just glancing down I see "new innovations", with "influenced" twice inside a few words; and "subsequently" twice in a few lines below that. So much of the article is quotes that this is not a big problem but I think it needs to be addressed.

-- Mike Christie (talk – library) 03:39, 9 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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