Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Textual criticism/archive1

Textual criticism
Recently achieved WP:GA status, a well written article, well sourced and very informative. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:34, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose. There are very few inline citations to verify the information that has been presented. Please see other recent FAs for an idea of what I mean.  JHMM13  16:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * There are plentiful inline citations using the Harvard referencing style, that you may have missed. See WP:CITE ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:49, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are about 30 Harvard references. Is there a reason the reference section has subsections for "Cladistics" and "Stemmatics" to list only one book? Gimmetrow 17:02, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Is there a problem in listing only one source? If that is the case, I will endeavor to find additional sources. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It looks a bit like an outline section with only one subsection. Gimmetrow 22:47, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * No, there are not plentiful inline citations. I did notice the Harvard refs, but there are not nearly enough of them. The entire "Overview" section has only one citation. I know it is not required to use the more popular ref system, but it certainly helps keep down the clutter. Any reason you prefer the Harvard style?  JHMM13  17:47, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I actually prefer the format ... but I was not the only contributor by far and the harvard referencing was there already. I have no problem in redoing the refs using the ref tags, though. As for the lack of citations in the overview, I can fix that. My question is: should I remove the candidacy for now, work on these and re-apply later? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:57, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Depends on how fast you can get reliable sources :-D. It took me a week once to find enough sources and I was in the library every other day. I'll keep an eye on this FAC to see what you do.  JHMM13  18:54, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * There are plenty of sources, so I wil see if I can get these soon. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:40, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Please check and let me know if the Overview section is now OK. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 21:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Generally speaking, and I hate doing so but I feel I must here, "there should be a citation at the end of every paragraph" to encompass all the information therein and then specific citations for points that are either controversial or have quotes or whatever. You should also use either the Harvard or the ref style for consistency. That said, I like it so far! I think it's well-written, but it could do with a lot of polishing. The lead needs some work. It needs to be an overview of the whole of the aritcle. I don't like the second paragraph at all: it seems like "I couldn't describe it, so here's someone who can." That quote can be in there (maybe use a block quote), but not in the lead. Another issue might be its length. It does go on for a rather long time about a subject that might not be worthy of 51kb (in my opinion, that is). I'm not going to oppose it for that, but this might be an issue with someone else. You may want to consider spinning some sections off and leaving a summary or some such thing. It's up to you.  JHMM13  22:11, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I will convert all the Harvard refs to wiki refs, and polish the lead a bit to summarize the main points. That is not a problem. As for the length, believe me when I say that is is a *short* article on the subject and a pretty good one at it There are literally hundreds of books on the subject, and this article is a pretty good summary of the main issues/methods etc on this fascinating (for some...) subject. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If you want to convert the citing mechanism from Harvard to cite.php, that's up to you, but I don't quite see why it needs changing. Gimmetrow 03:59, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Red links in See also, incorrect use of WP:DASH throughout, I fixed a few. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 20:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak Oppose &mdash; agree with Jossi about the refs. I also feel the ToC is too lengthy; this can be done by separating the reference section by semicolon headings instead of subheadings. Also, the lead is a bit on the short side, and contains a stubby final paragraph. The prose itself is decent, but I still recommend enlisting a pair of copy-editors to weed out any issues, including redundancies ("currently", excessive use of "also") and misplaced formality ("amongst"). &mdash; Deckiller 00:48, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose. As an article in development, Textual Criticism has some significant strengths. The information is interesting and deals with an important aspect of bibliographic work. There are a number of areas though that need attention if this is to be considered as a featured article. (1) Referencing is somewhat chaotic. Even if the choice is for content notes and a reference list, the reference list needs to be a single list alphabetically arranged, not separated into sections. Works referred to in the notes need to be included in the reference list too. Some minor editing for punctuation would be good too (yes...one of the banes of documentation is getting every detail of punctuation right. :-)) Also why are the access dates given with internal links? Linking to substantive dates/years within an article make sense; linking to every access date in a reference list tends to just clutter the references up (which by their nature are cluttered enough as it is!). (2) The writing style assumes a specialist reader in this area. A general well-informed lay reader would have some difficulty with this article, especially because of the reliance on jargon. Let's take the first sentence as an example: Textual criticism or lower criticism is a branch of philology or bibliography that is concerned with the identification and removal of errors from texts and manuscripts. Using multiple subjects adds a complexity not needed. So moving "lower criticism" into a separate sentence (something like "Textual criticism is sometimes also called 'lower criticism' because...." would make the information more accessible. Also, for example, yes, this type of textual criticism is part of philology and, yes, a reader can click on philology to see what on earth it is, but how much more readable the lead sentence would be if it went something like: "Textual criticism is a branch of the studies of ancient texts and manuscripts (philology) and of books and publishing (bibliography). It is concerned specifically with the identification....manuscripts." A reader then could click on the link to philology, but wouldn't have to in order to make sense out of the narrative. Thus, revision throughout the article from the perspective of a "well-informed lay reader" would take solid information and make it accessible for readers of a general encyclopedia (i.e. Wikipedia). (3) This article assumes that there is only one referent for the term "textual criticism." This may be true within philological and bibliographic studies, but within literary criticism (looking at literary texts) and rhetorical criticism (looking at any creative texts produced by humans, from speeches to advertisements to ...), textual criticism means something quite different. Generally in these areas of study, textual criticism refers to a "close reading and detailed analysis of a particular text." This might be an internal textual criticism (looking at the verbal or visual or sound texts in the artefact itself) or an external textual criticism (looking at the contexts of the artefact, its interpretation by actual audiences, and/or its relationship to other texts and artefacts). Thus one might do a internal textual criticism of the Disney film Beauty and the Beast, looking at the use of metaphor, adjectives, etc. to understand the contrasting human-animal imagery OR an external  textual analysis looking at previous versions of B/B and other animal-husband tales to see how the Disney version uses or departs from these texts. So, one can't then present textual criticism as only being concerned with history/accuracy of a written text (esp. a Biblical one). This article certainly has no obligation to develop rhetorical and literary textual criticism, but it must distinguish between these uses of the phrase "textual criticism" in a substantive way (not just a disambiguation). --- Ultimately this article has good potential to get to a featured article level, but work is needed before it gets there.Cyg-nifier 15:23, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Access dates are customarily linked to support date preferences. Nothing wrong with that. Gimmetrow 04:08, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Guess I'm not seeing it as an issue of right or wrong, but as an issue of clarity for a reader. Linking dates in a reference citation gives attention to something that really shouldn't be a primary focus of attention and, for me at least, this seems of greater importance than facilitating the date preferences. I've certainly no problem with linking dates within articles, but a reference is a very peculiar animal and it seems anything that can reduce the amount of input that has to be processed in reading one would make sense. But that's just me -- having to adapt to several varying ways of indicating dates over the years means that it's a non-issue for me, but I realize for others it is an issue. Cyg-nifier 10:10, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for the useful feedback, I will delist it for now, work on it and re-submit at a later date once I have addressed all your points. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:25, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * withdrawn by nominator Sandy Georgia (Talk) 18:25, 11 April 2007 (UTC)