Talk:Dario Fo/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Khazar2 (talk · contribs) 12:53, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

I'll be glad to take this review. Initial comments to follow in the next 1-3 days. Thanks in advance for your work on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:53, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Actually, before proceeding, I'd like to check to see if anyone is still active on this article and interested in doing the work for a GA review. I see a few issues at first glance that will need to be addressed, such as information in the lead section that isn't in the article body (a WP:LEAD problem), and a number of very long paragraphs (a WP:LAYOUT problem). -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:00, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

A few other misc. comments:
 * " From this period arise accusations that Fo was part of Mussolini's Republican army" -- how prevalent are these accusations? The article presents Fo's version in Wikipedia's voice, as fact; this might be an NPOV issue.
 * " Thus came Fo's first run-in with the new government of Silvio Berlusconi, which banned Italians under the age of 18 from seeing it over fears, it said, that the play could "cause offence to the common decency which requires respect for spheres of decency, and provoke distress among adolescent spectators, with possible effects on their behaviour in relation to sex", thus defeating the original purpose of the performance" -- this very long sentence (which even uses "thus" twice) could probably be broken into two or three smaller ones.
 * "By a peculiar coincidence," -- this phrase could be cut as a bit of unneeded commentary; sufficient to simply say his reaction was filmed.

I'll hold off on further comments for now until I'm sure this review is "live". Thanks to everybody working on this important article! -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:00, 2 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I'll get to the rest in the next 1-3 days. -- Khazar2 (talk) 16:24, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry I've been slower to get to this than planned; I've had some health issues slowing me down. Haven't forgotten you, though. -- Khazar2 (talk) 22:11, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry I've been slower to get to this than planned; I've had some health issues slowing me down. Haven't forgotten you, though. -- Khazar2 (talk) 22:11, 9 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, looking at the above again, I'm not sure these issues are really resolved. First, the lead and layout issues appear to remain; take a look at WP:LEAD and MOS:PARAGRAPHS (on the long paragraphs issue).


 * Second, I'm still not sure how well the Republican Army controversy is being addressed in terms of NPOV. The article presents Fo's version of events (joining Navy, deserting repeatedly) as fact but gives no voice to the accusations against him. Who has made these accusations? Are they widely discussed enough to be included here? It seems like if we give three sentences to Fo's defense of himself, a quotation from his accusers might also be appropriate--but I don't know how much weight reliable sources tend to give these accusations. Let me know your thoughts, and thanks again for your work. -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:12, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
 * That's all it says in the book. "This was later to lead to accusations against him of being a member of Mussolini's Republican Army." Followed by the quote giving his response. If you wish and if you think its use here is inappropriate I suppose you could remove the sentence "In response to suggestions he was part of Mussolini's Republican army, Fo wrote: "At the end it was like coming out of a nightmare, an absurdity which seemed endless. This is another reason why I get angry when I'm accused of being a Republican. I see it as an insult against all those years of suffering which my family, my friends and the people of my town had to go through." The citation at the end also covers the previous sentence about him sleeping rough in the countryside.
 * I've done that now. --86.40.102.53 (talk) 23:31, 16 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I think that's an improvement, unless we can find other sources that see this as relevant. (It sounds like this is a very small part of the book). -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:09, 17 May 2013 (UTC)


 * The phrase "Horatio plays the ghost of Hamlet's father dressed up as a sheet" confuses me--do you mean that Horatio dresses up in a sheet to play the ghost of Hamlet's father? Or Horatio is actually imitating what the Ghost would look like if the Ghost dressed as a sheet?
 * "Fo said, "For me the lesson of the cinema..." -- is this something he said at the time or later? It sounds like later, which might be useful to specify.
 * "the now defunct McCarran-Walter Act." -- "now-defunct" seems to just confuse the issue a bit here--you don't mean it was already defunct when Fo was denied access, do you? "Now" is also better to avoid per WP:REALTIME.

Closing review
This article appears to cover most major aspects of Fo's life well-- I really appreciate your work on it. I'm concerned, though, that it still falls short of the GA criteria in some difficult-to-fix areas.

The first is WP:LEAD, despite two weeks of work; this is improving, but the lead still appears to have been written separately from the article, rather than summarizing it. Important facts remain in the lead that are barely mentioned (or aren't mentioned) in the body, like ""Arguably the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre",[5] much of his dramatic work depends on improvisation and comprises the recovery of "illegitimate" forms of theatre, such as those performed by giullari (medieval strolling players)[6] and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell'arte.[7]", or his focus on the European sovereign-debt crisis. Mistero Buffo is identified as his most important work in the lead, but the body never seems to describe it except a one sentence mention that the Vatican objected to its airing on TV. (Oddly, the lead appears to have more information about this play than the body, which is very backwards.)

A second issue here, and a bit trickier to evaluate, is the article's almost exclusive reliance on Mitchell. I can't see more than a sentence or two at a time in Google Books preview, but I'm concerned that the article follows Mitchell's work to a degree that could rise to a copyright issue, including an unnecessary reliance on his language. For example, the description of the canned meat TV show gag appears to be closely paraphrased from Mitchell; describing the TV content as "diversionary and trivial" are Mitchell's words exactly; etc. This might not be a major issue if one of these was the only bit taken from Mitchell, but without other sources to interweave, I'm concerned about the copyright status. You can read suggestions for how to fix an issue like this at WP:PARAPHRASE, but the basic suggestion I'd make is that this article needs to move away from solely relying on Mitchell to other biographical, journalistic, and literary-critical coverage.

The last suggestion I'd make is that it would be helpful to have a dedicated section to describing Fo's aesthetic, style, themes, etc. A bit of this is scattered in the chronologic history section, but that format doesn't allow for much analysis or discussion. A quick Google search shows that such analysis of his work does exist; I'd suggest including some non-Miller sources on this.

I hope this helps. Sorry this one didn't end up in the "pass" we both wanted, but thanks nonetheless for your work to improve the article on this important figure. And please let me know if you have any questions or if there's any way I can help with the above. Cheers, -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:09, 17 May 2013 (UTC)