Talk:Piracy in the Atlantic World

Personal Reflection or Essay?
I'm looking for help regarding a problem with this article reported by Cindamuse back in December. I am trying to determine which parts of the article are a problem, or if it is the entire article. I appreciate the help. Thanks. --Michelledavison (talk) 17:43, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I just read the entire article and it seems very encyclopedic to me. I do not understand the criticism of it as sounding like a personal essay. OrionClemens (talk) 17:53, 24 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:28, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I am going to remove the flag then. Michelledavison (talk) 18:39, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Copy and paste of an email I sent to the instructor, assistants, and User:JMathewson (WMF) about this article
To help illustrate a conversation at WP:ENB, here's some feedback I gave on this article:

I'm glad things went smoothly for your class. I like that you are getting the groups together to focus on a narrow set of topics. And I appreciate the consistent formatting of the references in the article. =) In addition to email, I'm also available on Skype and Viber (an app for free international cell phone calls/texts using the internet). I've run question and answer sessions online and in person for classes.

I look at my role as an ambassador to bridge the gap between the community/readers and academia. I'd like to share with you several constructive criticisms of the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_Atlantic_World to help your assignment improve.

A big point is that I can say confidently that the article is too long and that it contains unnecessary prose. The Wikipedia article size guideline advises:

"A page of about 30 kB to 50 kB of readable prose, which roughly corresponds to 6,000 to 10,000 words, takes between 30 and 40 minutes to read at average speed, which is right on the limit of the average concentration span of 40 to 50 minutes.[1] At 50 kB and above it may benefit the reader to consider moving some sections to other articles and replace them with summaries per Wikipedia:Summary style - see WP:SIZERULE for 'a rule of thumb'. Comprehension of standard texts at average reading speed is around 65%."

The article currently registers at 84 kB (14214 words) of readable prose. Perhaps the assignment design (number of students X required length of contribution) needs adjusting? To fix this, the article could be copy-edited to reduce word count and/or split. I notice that the section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_Atlantic_World#A_General_History_of_the_Pyrates is largely inappropriate for an encyclopedic entry on Piracy in the Atlantic World. It's content should instead largely be at the article on the book itself, and perhaps adopted here in a brief mention or in summary style.

Another section that unnecessarily duplicates another topic on the page relates to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasparilla_Pirate_Festival. This reminds me of the term "content forking" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Content_forking, because it's as if we have a collection of repeated/duplicating/overlapping articles.

Currently, if readers are to get through the article, which is supposed to be about pirates, a paragraph they'll encounter is this:

"Disputes between different Defoe biographers called his body of work into question. Based on the accounts of these many biographers, Defoe's attributed canon went from 101 different works to 570 between the years of 1790 and 1970. Most of these additions were made on the basis of internal, 'stylistic' evidence. Moore's publication of his Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe added almost 200 works alone. Many questioned not only his attribution of A General History to Defoe, but the general trend of biographers to continually add to the canon. One critic even suggested, based on this trend, that all anonymous works from the early eighteenth century be designated Defoe's. Philip Furbank and W. R. Owens' arguments against Defoe's authorship of A General History address the parallels that are drawn to other works of the time (often also attributed to Defoe) and the logical fallacies that are necessary to subscribe to such a large, diverse catalog. Many of the ideas and phrases that Moore points to as parallels, and therefore as proof of Defoe's continuity in his works, were commonplace in the eighteenth century. According to Furbank and Owens, Moore's attribution of A General History to Defoe was based on no external evidence and only those few circumstantial parallels."

I also think the writing could be make more encyclopedic and less essay-like. Consider this sentence: "Hans Turley looks to the literary evidence of Pirates, and in particular Captain Avery, when drawing the conclusion of the pirate as the 'antihero.' " I don't think this would be found in a print encyclopedia entry on the topic.

The article also does not use a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lead (a standard of Wikipedia articles). And I think that there is an overuse of quotes, which affects the readability.

So, to summarize, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and it's goal is to be concise and digestible. I think the article is a well researched, but that it has formatting issues that dampen its value to the project. I hope these comments help you understand more about what Wikipedia is. =) Does anyone have any questions?

So I can understand why this article was tagged as being essay-like. Biosthmors (talk) 09:33, 15 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I've said this also at WP:ENB, but frankly none of the above convinces me that this article is "essay-like." It may be too long, it may not fit the standard Wikipedia format (for instance, in the lack of a lead), but these elements do not an "essay" make. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:32, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Absurdly, the section on Defoe's book is longer & more detailed than its actual article. It should all be merged there, with a summary here (wholly excluding the para quoted above, which is way off-topic). I do think the article is rather essay-ish, but not fatally so, & the essay isn't bad at all. Johnbod (talk) 21:11, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Length is not the most important issue. We have feature articles like Stanley Cup that is roughly as long as this article (though Stanley Cup forks some content to other pages). Nonetheless, the overall length is not that big of a factor. OhanaUnitedTalk page 21:20, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Added MergeTo suggestions on three sections
Added MergeTo suggestions on sections about A General History of the Pyrates, Whydah Galley, and Gasparilla Pirate Festival. These topics each have their own dedicated pages, and content here would be better summarized with links to the main articles for further information. For an example of how this should look, see the section on Golden Age of Piracy, which has a brief summary with a "Main Article:" link to the proper Golden Age page. This page has other issues - eg., over 70 citations to a single source (Rediker) - but is generally in-depth and well-cited. Summarizing and moving those sections with their associated references would help a good deal with cleaning up and shortening the article. If left to do it myself, it might take a year or three, so here's hoping one of the original authors (students and their professors) is still watching the page! TheLastBrunnenG (talk) 20:01, 14 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Merge/remove: There is very little new information in the section about the Gasparilla Pirate Festival that could be moved to the independent article; perhaps a couple of details and a reference or two. Honestly, I think that the section should be removed altogether. This article is about actual pirates who operated in the Atlantic Ocean, while Gasparilla is a parade/party which was inspired by a fictional pirate (Jose Gaspar) who was created for a Florida hotel's promotional brochure. (BTW, it is acknowledged and accepted by Tampeños that Gaspar never existed, so the sentence stating that "...rumors have circulated that Jose Gaspar was not indeed an actual person, but that means little to the Tampa community" is not only unencyclopedic but factually incorrect.) Also, the stories claim that Gaspar (supposedly) operated in the Gulf of Mexico, not the Atlantic, and Tampa is also on the Gulf coast. So I really don't see the connection here. Zeng8r (talk) 21:01, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Done I just noticed that this discussion started over a year ago with no reply, so I went ahead and removed the section for the reasons stated above. I'll merge a couple of details into the main Gasparilla article, though I had to find online new sources for verification since I'd have to head down to the downtown Tampa library's reference section to access the sources previously cited. Zeng8r (talk) 21:32, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Done for A General History of the Pyrates. Klbrain (talk) 17:48, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

This is very cool!!
USF students are doing well. Keep up the good work! :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by EpicRavenFang (talk • contribs) 22:59, 3 April 2018 (UTC)