Talk:The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

Suspected copyvio reverted
NHSavage recently merged a plot summary originally contributed by 24.127.101.24 into this article. I have tentatively reverted the merge, since the style (including the presence of review quotes) makes me suspect the text may have been copied from a back cover blurb or an advertisement. However, I have been unable to find a matching original on the web, so I have no actual evidence of this being a copyright violation, just a personal hunch.

The original unmerged version by 24.127.101.24 can be found here. If you recognize the source, please let me know. If you are, in fact, the original author of the text, please say so. In that case I have nothing against including it in the article. Any (non-copyvio) improvements to the current version are also welcome. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:54, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
 * All this material is original (I wrote it). The quotations were indeed from the book cover and were cited accordingly, please delete if this is against the rules.  I do believe, however, that the last sentence of my review should be preserved which follows those cited reviews.


 * (An observation - it is strange that such a fuss is made over cited reviews given the ownership of all our Wikipedia entries by (effectively) a single individual). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.127.101.24 (talk) 04:32, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup
This article has many punctuational and capitilizational errors. Having read the book, the information presented in this article is impeccable in its accuracy, but this is overshadowed by the general messiness. The mistakes should be promptly recitified if possible.

Cleanup (continued)
I neglected to note in my first post that these mistakes are most probably the result of vandalization rather than the original author.

for cleanup, this article was too long. Darthdj31 (talk) 01:09, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Charlotte doyle.jpg
Image:Charlotte doyle.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 07:07, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Charlotte's father
Charlott's father was described in this article as tyrannous, though it is never mentioned in the book. I changed the word to ardent, which is mentioned in the chapter called "An Important Warning" in the following sentence: "My father, an ardent believer in regularity and order..."--Idontknow610 13:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)idontknow610

Intensive Cleanup Required
The "Character" section really needs to get cleaned up badly. For example, Zachariah's description is MORE THAN 40 continuous lines long WITHOUT any pauses or paragraphes. It is totally unreadable and confusing. Same thing for Captain Andrew Jaggery, Barlow, Ewing, and many more. Moreover, it is quite surprising to see that the main character, Charlotte, Doyle, has only 4 lines to describe her, whereas some secondary characters have 10 times more... Finally, do we REALLY need 24 character descriptions??? It is quite a lot.. At first glance, it seems that this article is not about the book, but rather the book's characters considering that this article itself is composed of 80% characters description and 20% infos about the book... it is not normal... Jolenine (Talk - Contribs) 03:38, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree. There are quite a lot of characters mentioned (many of whom have very long descriptions), which overwhelms the reader. I would suggest including only Charlotte, one section for her family (including servants), a couple of the more major shipmen (with shortened descriptions), and then a section on the rest of the shipmen. Most of the details about the shipmen and family could be fit in a revised description of the plot. The section with the awards at the top could be combined with some information about the books development and sales, as well as the mention of the movie adaption (that would fit very well after a paragraph discussing the sales and awards of the book, IMHO). To replace them at the beginning could be a short thing just telling the author, the general storyline (where it is set, who is the main character, etc.), and a general mention of the sales/awards of the book (the response to the book). 76.195.210.125 (talk) 02:22, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It actually probably not as daunting a task as it looks. The main problem (for the character section) is that each major character's description is basically a plot summary of the entire book. There's a lot of repetition of plot elements and insignificant details. The article's bloat would be greatly shortened just by removing the repeated mentions of plot elements. 76.195.210.125 (talk) 02:46, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

im thinkin that too- wow- charlotte doyle's profile is lest than all the crews i'll try to fix that. Darthdj31 (talk) 22:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

ok i cleaned it a little. people might want to add stuff though. Darthdj31 (talk) 22:55, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I have done further clean-up. Taking a look at some Featured/Good Articles, such as Watership Down and Lord of the Rings only the most important characters are generally listed with a short summary, so this was the model I went with. 16:40, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

The True Confessions
Regarding the title, is this book in fact based on a true story? Harksaw (talk) 16:30, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I would consider that to be unlikely. It is called "true confessions" because the setting of the story a cover up story was given (thus, this is the "true" story of what happened).76.195.210.125 (talk) 02:46, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Definetly no-Avi writes mostly fiction, and anyways, the Seahawk isn't a real ship, unless by coincidence. it can be classified as historical fiction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Darthdj31 (talk • contribs) 01:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Fan Perspective
I'm returning to Wikipedia after a long absence, but it's my understanding that Wikipedia is not for plot only description of fictional works. If that's the case then this article needs radical reformation.Barkeep49 (talk) 15:03, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

True. That's probably the main reason why the article is a stub. We've got enough information on the plot and characters (it still needs cleanup and referencing and all, but it mostly summarizes the book enough for encyclopedic understanding), but we have very little information about its writing or response. Let's look at another article on a book, which is understandably more thoroughly done: The_Lord_of_the_Rings There's a plot synopsis like in this article (with roughly the same level of detail), then a short list of characters (wish we could slim this one's character section down to that length - they do have the advantage there that each character's themes and emotions can be described in more detail in other pages - same with less important characters).

Then there's Background and Writing sections (some information about Avi, perhaps from here could help - maybe the official website has some information?). There's a section about Influences, and later one about Legacy (both are unlikely to be as important for this writing).

Publication History would be a useful fact, as well as enough Reception (awards, details about awarding, how it sold, reviews...) to separate out the movie adaption into its own part.76.195.210.125 (talk) 00:08, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

What's Next?
The page is in very different shape than it was a month ago. I would love to see the page get to GA status. What do people think still needs to happen to reach that status?Barkeep49 (talk) 15:21, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

a ton of people edited it, including me, but one user did a very good cleanup for the page —Preceding unsigned comment added by Darthdj31 (talk • contribs) 04:02, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks like we'd just need to double check the images and references (to make sure they are the best we can use), edit the plot and character sections a little more for clarity (it's improved a lot, but I think we could still improve it), and add in any more details about the reception or themes that we can discover. It's illustrated pretty well for what it is (if there's any good picture for reception - images of it being awarded or sold in some special way, or images of the author talking about it or something like that - that might add something). As long as the images have all their paperwork right, I think we're pretty good on that regard. It's not especially unstable (I'm pretty sure we're all fairly okay with the content - no edit warring or controversial stances on the topic). It looks fairly neutral (did anyone seriously criticize the book? If so, we should probably add that view.), and cites the opinions given. We've gotten most every aspect we know about the book in the article (without going into too much detail in character or plot descriptions). The things described and citation usage match up to the usage in articles like Lord of the Rings and Watership Down (although at a much smaller scale, and without some categories that we simply lack the information for). The spelling and grammar is pretty good, and it's fairly clear.--76.195.210.125 (talk) 18:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Great comment. I'm willing to do some picture looking and will see if I can find some of the pictures you described.  I'd been having a hard time thinking of what kind of illustrations to include (I've spent a lot of time trying to find a picture of a round robin, with-out success).  As for the negative critical reviews I've read quite a few others I didn't cite anywhere because they were repetitive, but found zero critical reviews.  I found one off hand comment to Charlotte Doyle being a banned book, but haven't been able to substantiate that. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:22, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Assessment
As requested at WikiProject Children's literature, I have assessed this article and improved its rating to B class. For suggestions on how to improve this article further, I suggest you examine the Good Article criteria or request a peer review. strdst_grl  (call me Stardust) 14:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20081204110036/http://movies.nytimes.com:80/movie/426617/The-True-Confessions-of-Charlotte-Doyle/cast to http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/426617/The-True-Confessions-of-Charlotte-Doyle/cast

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 13:13, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100209161946/http://harpercollinschildrens.com/Kids/BookDetail.aspx?isbn13=9780380714759 to http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/Kids/BookDetail.aspx?isbn13=9780380714759

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 17:09, 15 January 2018 (UTC)