Talk:Martine van Hamel/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Seraphim System (talk · contribs) 10:11, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

I think all the criteria are met - will leave the review open for about a week to give other editors an opportunity to comment. Seraphim System ( talk ) 10:11, 29 May 2017 (UTC)


 * The Career section has some odd use of quotes, including some that should certainly be attributed in the text, and some that don't quite make sense in context. In places, it reads more like a magazine article rather than an encyclopedic one; one example is the first paragraph, where "she said" is used not once but twice. It is the very rare article that has no errors at all in grammar or usage, such that it meets that particular criterion, and this does not appear to be one of them. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:56, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you - I agree the second use of "she said" is not ideal. Upon re-reading the paragraph I would also caution against following her statement that she used "weight loss to to rebel against the forces that controlled her life" with the statement that "the artistic director controls your career" - we have to be very careful with primary sources to avoid WP:SYNTH and even more careful with a WP:BLP. As for the quotes from the papers, I see a lot of attributed major reviews - she won Prix de Varna (which is like an Olympic gold medal in the ballet world.) - the only unattributed quote in I see in the section is from the Oxford Dictionary of Dance - and that does not need attribution. We often see puffery in Wikipedia articles, but Van Hamel actually was one of the (few) established leading classical ballerinas in America - and since this can be sourced to OUP, I think it is fine.  Seraphim System  ( talk ) 02:24, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * We'll have to agree to disagree on not attributing the Oxford Dictionary of Dance quote; to use the vague "has been described as being" doesn't let the reader know the context or the quality of description. But the quotation in question is a bit of a mess in the context of the given sentence: Van Hamel has been described as being "a tall, strong dancer with a technique that embraced both a muscular power and a delicate expressiveness, she became established as one of the leading classical ballerinas in America."—it just doesn't work as a unit. BlueMoonset (talk) 05:25, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * As it is sourced to OUP, would it be ok to work it into the article text without using a quote? In any case, I will let the nominator decide how they want to address it, I've left a talk message for them about it. Seraphim System  ( talk ) 05:34, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I wholeheartedly welcome the feedback. I have made some improvements and hopefully moved the article towards a more readily attributed and streamlined prose in the points mentioned above. The sentence from The Oxford Dictionary of Dance, as written there, presents it in much the same way. It denotes her promotion to principal dancer and then immediately follows it with the sentence, "A tall, strong dancer with a technique that embraced both a muscular power and a delicate expressiveness, she became established as one of the leading classical ballerinas in America." While originally I aimed to do the same thing in the article, in terms of context, the point they're able to make is that she became principal and became established as one of the leading classical ballerinas in America. I've drawn these two ideas closer together and put the rest of the sentence following to preserve the full idea being expressed by the OXD writer. Any less and I would worry we're too greatly influencing the source material. Please let me know your thoughts and I will look at it. I'm currently away travelling right now and it may be difficult for me to respond promptly. Thank you for your patience. Mkdw  talk  17:38, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree, for that description to have made it into OXD, it was most likely a widely held view like "Baryshnikov had a good jump" or "His phrasing was very musical" - probably this was repeated so many times in contemporary press reports that it is considered more of an encyclopedic description of the type of dancer then a subjective opinion - if you were to got through the newspaper archives, you might find 100 New York Times reviews that describe her in similar terms - powerful but expressive, muscular and lyrical, etc. OXD would not have published it otherwise. Seraphim System  ( talk ) 18:44, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Congrats, passed. A reminder that punctuation should be inside quotation marks—I have fixed this. Since Martine Van Hamel won the Varna gold medal in the same year as Baryshnikov (sometimes Varna does not award a gold medal at all) and the entry in Oxford Dictionary of Dance, I judged the quotes to be a fair representation of her career and the major reviews she has received in NY Times and other international dance publications. Seraphim System ( talk ) 16:25, 5 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for taking the time to review this article . I had nominated it on 1 November 2016 so it is really great to see it pass. Thank you again, Mkdw  talk 18:19, 5 June 2017 (UTC)