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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Open Boat/archive1

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 Karanacs 01:36, 14 April 2010 [1].

The Open Boat

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The Open Boat (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Nominator(s): María (habla conmigo) 14:43, 5 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Stephen Crane was only 25-years old when his steamship, the SS Commodore, sank off the coast of Florida. The correspondent survived thirty hours huddled together with three other men on a 10-foot dinghy; one of them didn't make it. Out of this harrowing experience came one of the best American short stories ever written, "The Open Boat". It's a relatively short article, but comprehensive and (I hope) an interesting read. It was promoted to GA last month and recently went through a Peer Review. As this is my first attempt to bring a work of literature to FA, and several others may follow, any and all comments/suggestions are welcome. Thanks! María (habla conmigo) 14:43, 5 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments. No dab links or dead external links. Ucucha 14:48, 5 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support by Ruhrfisch, with a few comments. Very interesting and well done article - I have a few comments, which do not detract from my support.
    • WP:LEAD strongly suggests that direct quotations in the lead should have a reference.
    • Should this be "leaving" instead of "leading"? ...the correspondent regularly refers to the way things "seemed" or "appeared", leading how a thing actually "is" entirely ambiguous.[28]
    • Could the word "keeps" be moved out of the quote and brackets in Editor Vincent Starrett stated in his introduction to the 1921 collection of Crane's work entitled Men, Women and Boats that the author "[keeps] down the tone where another writer might have attempted 'fine writing' and have been lost."[18] i.e. ...that the author keeps "down the tone where another writer might ...
    • WP:Logical quotation sometimes confuses me - thankfully, SandyGeorgia catches my errors - but it seems to me some of the quotes might not be correctly using quotation marks. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 03:20, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the comments and support, Ruhrfisch! I've added a citation to the lead (a repeat of what is used for verification later in the article) and changed the "leaving" and "keeps" as suggested. As for the logical quotations, I've looked through them again and don't believe anything is amiss; most of the quotes used are complete thoughts, and all end in periods, which is why the punctuation is contained within the quotation marks -- even the poem has a period! Thanks again. :) María (habla conmigo) 12:20, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. This is a well-written, engaging, and thorough article about Crane's story. I found the critical commentary intriguing, and the prose finely sculpted. I have a few minor questions and suggestions, which I have left on the article's talk page. Kudos to Maria for another fine piece! Scartol • Tok 15:57, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Scartol, you're a gem. Thank you so much for the thoughtful copy-editing (as always) and the in depth comments on the talk page. I'll respond in detail to your comments, hopefully tomorrow when I have my books in front of me. María (habla conmigo) 16:54, 9 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Well wrote, images check out, alt text present, and references look good. I do have one comment though. In the notes, the year of the references in parenthesis, but in the reference section they are not in parenthesis. I believe the years in both sections should have parenthesis. —Charles Edward (Talk | Contribs) 13:03, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for the comments and support, Charles Edward! The only citations that use parentheses are the ones for Wertheim, in order to differentiate between his two books used as references. I don't believe the citations and the listed references need to match, per se; this is a style I've used in both Stephen Crane and, to a further extent (in which all citations include the year of publication in parentheses), Emily Dickinson. María (habla conmigo) 13:22, 13 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose until a concern, similar to one i raised in the GA review, has been addressed. The article is excellent, but if you read carefully it apepars to contain several instances of original research. Examples:
  • Plot summary: "The first part introduces the four characters—the correspondent, a condescending observer detached from the rest of the group..." etc. Think carefully: I presume Crane has not actually had one of the characters say that the correspondent is "a condescending observer". This is not a plot feature (ie. it should not be in this section of the WP article), and it represents an analysis of the story's characters that needs to be sourced.
  • Major themes: "That nature is an ultimately disinterested woman is an idea that appears in other works by Crane; in his 1895 novel The Red Badge of Courage, for example, the character Henry Flemming thinks "Nature to be a woman with a deep aversion to tragedy."" Superficially this appears OK, except that the footnote is to Crane's book (ie. The Red Badge of Courage etc) Thus a WP editor has engaged in OR by locating a quote from Flemming and telling us that this shows Crane repeating his theme of "nature [as] an ultimately disinterested woman". The same thing happens later in this subsection, with the sentence that begins "The correspondent laments the lack of religious support, as well as his inability to blame God for his misfortunes, musing:..." The footnote is again to Crane's story, so the interpretation of it is that of a WP editor.

I really enjoyed this article and think María does a great job, but at present she looks too close to the subject to have realised that this type of OR has occurred. I hope these points can be addressed, regards, hamiltonstone (talk) 01:21, 14 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.