Talk:George Griffith/Archive 1

Identity
Is this the same George Griffith who wrote the 1899 book “Men Who Made the Empire”? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.176.144.182 (talk) 23:44, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Footnote Problem
@TompaDompa The footnote from Darren Harris-Fain has a quote in it which only applies to a single instance of its 20-some uses in this article. Just Another Cringy Username (talk) 01:30, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

WP:Close paraphrasing
I object to the phrasing"before going to sea as an apprentice. He deserted his ship in Melbourne and was a manual labourer in Australia" when the source says"before going to sea as an apprentice. [...] when the ship arrived in Melbourne, he deserted it and worked as a manual laborer in Australia" as overly WP:Close paraphrasing. TompaDompa (talk) 15:27, 14 May 2023 (UTC)


 * WP:LIMITED applies. It could be said he "left the ship without permission" but "in Melbourne" is necessary. Both 'apprentice' and 'manual labourer' are terms that accurately identifies the jobs. You can just rewrite the sentence such that all three elements are retained GraemeLeggett (talk) 17:11, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * It's rather dubious to invoke WP:LIMITED when we have the perfectly cromulent option of not going into as much detail as the source does. TompaDompa (talk) 17:43, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

WP:Citation style
This did not follow the existing WP:Citation style, nor did it properly establish a new one. Instead, it resulted in an inconsistent mess that additionally runs the risk of breaking when references are edited down the line. I see no strong reason we should even need to cite the specific page some piece of information appears on in a source this brief. Doing it this way also obfuscates the heavy reliance on a single source and pads the reference list to boot. TompaDompa (talk) 22:45, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I think any reader can spot that the main section on his life is drawn from one source, and in a short article, reference list padding is not an issue. GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:27, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

WP:REDLINKS
Removing redlinks to Griffith's works including A Honeymoon in Space—a highly notable work discussed in multiple articles on Wikipedia—while asserting that his many less known stories redlinks unlikely to turn blue seems rather silly to me, not to mention contrary to WP:REDLINKS, which states that Only remove red links if you are certain that Wikipedia should not have an article on that subject. (emphasis in original). TompaDompa (talk) 15:31, 14 May 2023 (UTC)


 * All those articles that link to A Honeymoon in Space also link to this article. There are seven and for the most part it is a passing mention of what book a certain concept appeared in rather than a description or critique of Griffith's work, and the sources are equally brief. The hurdle for Redlink is "a page will be created soon or that an article should be created for the topic because the subject is notable and verifiable" and while verifiable, I'm not getting the notability to the level expected for books. And Griffith is largely forgotten and his books obscure - hence the "Forgotten Futures" of Marcus L. Rowland. GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:58, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Addendum, Stories of Other Worlds is only linked from Forgotten Futures and this article. GraemeLeggett (talk) 17:01, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Based on the coverage in e.g. Stableford's Space, Time, and Infinity: Essays on Fantastic Literature, Crossley's Imagining Mars: A Literary History, and Bailey's Pilgrims Through Space and Time: Trends in Scientific and Utopian Fiction, it certainly meets notability requirements. TompaDompa (talk) 18:28, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * There we go, A Honeymoon in Space now has an article. TompaDompa (talk) 21:43, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

"Private institution"
Writing he studied at a "private institution" is a pretty clear instance of MOS:SCAREQUOTES. If it needs to be put in quotation marks to make it clear that it's the exact phrasing used by the source (and I don't think it does), it should be attributed WP:INTEXT. Another option is to just leave this detail out entirely. TompaDompa (talk) 15:24, 14 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I think that's a mis-reading of the Manual of Style where it says "with attribution, to present emotive opinions that cannot be expressed in Wikipedia's own voice" it's not an emotive use of words, and the attribution of the quote is via the the citation. we are using the source's words (in quotes) because we are avoiding trying to jump to a conclusion as to what specific education he received but formal education he did have.  GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:41, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * My point is not that it needs WP:INTEXT attribution per se (it doesn't), but that the quotation marks become "scare quotes" without it. If we write he studied at what Darren Harris-Fain describes only as "a private institution" in Southport (or even [...] "a private institution in Southport"), it's not scare quotes anymore. If we write he studied in Southport we also avoid that problem. Likewise if we write he studied at a private institution in Southport, but I gather that you think that's not a good option. TompaDompa (talk) 16:55, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Moskowitz calls it a private school, so I removed the quotation marks and changed "institution" to "school". TompaDompa (talk) 05:08, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Upcoming PhD thesis on Griffith
Noting for future reference that there is an upcoming PhD thesis on Griffith (see https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/english/adam-baldwin-on-helping-george-griffith-wing-his-way-into-modern-critical-consciousness/) that could be a useful source for improving this article. We'll just have to see. The source also notes that the same author has an article in the summer 2023 issue of Foundation on "Hellville, U.S.A.", and that could perhaps be useful for an article on the short story. TompaDompa (talk) 01:53, 19 August 2023 (UTC)