Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sylvia Plath/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 07:56, 7 July 2017.

Sylvia Plath

 * Nominator(s): Matt723star (talk) 16:34, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

This article is about... Sylvia Plath, an American poet from Boston, Massachusetts who helped popularize the confessional poetry movement. She is best remembered for her grim poetry that took ordinary housewife subjects and situations and twisted them coldly; this writing style is due to her being a sufferer of depression, which she had suffered from since an early age shortly after her father died. In the 1950's she met Ted Hughes, a renowned British poet, and they married and moved to England, where Plath would spend the remainder of her life. After Plath discovered Hughes had been having extramarital affairs, the couple divorced. In 1963, Plath committed suicide by placing her head in her oven; she was 30 years old. Her life, body of work, and death have been adopted by modern feminism as an example of womanhood under the throws of mental illness and unfair spousal treatment, and her work is still praised and criticized today. Matt723star (talk) 16:34, 11 June 2017 (UTC)


 * The first thing I notice is that the referencing is a mess. It's not consistent (some books have ISBN numbers, some don't; the formatting of the page ranges varies); two of the links given in the references are marked as dead; hyphens are used to mark page ranges (should be en-dashes instead); some of the links which should have accessdates don't (e.g. one to londonremembers.com, which is currently ref#23).
 * Secondly, the lead is very short; only two paragraphs, one very brief. For an article of this length (30kB prose, 5000+ words) I'd expect 3 or 4 paragraphs of lead.  Her writing is barely discussed in the lead!
 * The lead says that Plath is "best known for her two published collections", which wrongly implies that only two collections of Plath's poetry were published; Winter Trees and Crossing the Water also exist, however.

At this rate, I'm beginning to get concerned about how ready the article is for FAC. Consistent referencing is really the sort of thing that should be sorted out before nomination... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 09:08, 12 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Well all of this can be easily sorted. You have to remember that it says "best remembered", it doesn't say "she published only two collections". If anything it implies that while she has numerous books published in her name there are certain ones that stuck out of the whole. But like I said, with that little nonce, the article might need some work to establish it as a Feature, as it presents itself right now it is good. Matt723star (talk) 21:19, 12 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Oppose - as the above suggests, the nominator doesn't seem ever to have edited the article, nor consulted the main editors. That's not how this works. Johnbod (talk) 03:19, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 *  Oppose and possible GA reassessment. This was passed by its reviewer despite a number of concerns raised above, which I bet the nominator wouldn't have addressed in a timely manner. Also, as per above, the nominator should consider consulting the major contributor/s to an article he plan to nominate in future GACs. It appears that drive-by noms is a regular occurrence with this user, based on his user talk page; he's had some GA noms that were failed due to failure in meeting this criteria. Blue  sphere  03:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Oppose and suggest withdrawal for essentially the same reasons as Bluesphere above. Parcly  Taxel  07:34, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 07:56, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.