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Willow's GA review: preamble

I've never done a Good article review, so I hope that I'm doing the right thing by posting it here. Please forgive any other lapses.

I'll have to do this piecemeal over the next few days, but since the article has been in development for so long, such a short delay shouldn't be a problem. Thank you all for your patience! :)

I've studied the GA criteria, read the article through a few times, and turned it over in my mind for a few days. It's an interesting article, and its subject is well-worthy of the effort that its author has lavished on the article. I hope that these initial comments will be taken as constructive criticism, and, indeed, I'm more than willing to share the burden of improving the article.

To bring us together with a common purpose, I think we should agree in advance on two questions:

  • who is the intended audience? and
  • what should they get out of reading the article?

I believe that the most appropriate audience for this article does not consist of academics who have studied Pinter at the graduate level or above. Such graduate students, professors, etc. seem unlikely to turn to Wikipedia to inform themselves about Pinter, or to cite it in their own scholarship. Instead, I propose that the article be targeted to (1) undergraduate college students not majoring in literature; and (2) working people with a general college education, again not in literature. Both of these groups may not be familiar with the conventions of literary scholarship. The expertise level of these target audiences may be lower than originally envisioned, but I believe (a) that Pinter is notable for people other than literature majors, and (b) that the details covered in the present article are within the understanding of the two target audiences given above. Willow 20:23, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

To clarify the thread of the discussion — which may become intricate — my replies to your comments on my original review will be in magenta. I'll clarify a few minor points now but I'll return tomorrow, when I have more time. Willow 04:17, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Target audience?

[and] [--NYScholar 01:07, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]

"Criteria" for "good articles"

Comments about "criteria" for "good articles" in Wikipedia need to refer directly to Wikipedia:What is a good article?, which are the actual "criteria" for a "good article" in Wikipedia. I see no definition of such a "target audience" as the above reviewer's comments assume. People all over the world from many different backgrounds and levels of education, professions, and professional experience consult the English version of Wikipedia. This assumption about the "target audience" of this "encyclopedia" seems incorrect. What "audience" does Wikipedia "target"? Please provide a link to official policies and guidelines to verify such an assumption. Thank you. --NYScholar 23:51, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

If a new reviewer, one may perhaps also find it helpful to consult Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles. Thanks. --NYScholar 23:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC) [added heading. --NYScholar 01:06, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]

There is indeed no GA criterion for a target audience, although I hope that you can see the futility of writing a Wikipedia article on Pinter to inform other Pinter scholars. I hope likewise that we agree on the common purpose of making your article as intelligible as possible to its widest audience, consistent with keeping it accurate. This article does not describe quantum field theory or some other hopelessly arcane field that can be expressed only in mathematics and technical concepts understood by a few devotees. Therefore, I believe that the present contents of this article could be understood and appreciated by a wide variety of people. If the article fails in that basic purpose because of writing that is aimed at fellow Pinter scholars, who are blessed with much background knowledge and unusual insights on Pinter, then it cannot be considered a good encyclopedia article. Clear prose is the first criterion of a good article; hence, the average college-educated reader should be able to follow its train of thought throughout the article without extraordinary exertion. Do we agree on those principles? Willow 05:27, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The audience

This article is not directed to other [advanced-level] scholars of Harold Pinter, although, as an editor, I do keep always in mind that college and university students (sometimes considered amateur scholars or scholars in training) are members of academia; if they are part of the assumed "target audience" (so to speak), it is entirely appropriate to provide a well-documented article about Pinter that can be useful for them, containing references to reliable published sources that they can explore further. Articles in medicine in Wikipedia and in scientific subjects are highly developed; there is no reason why an article on a literary figure cannot be as highly developed as one in those disciplines. If one examines comments on Wikipedia in the press, including in the The Chronicle of Higher Education (cited in my currently-redirected talk page), one will see the weaknesses of Wikipedia (Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not) that an article like this one is trying to correct. Because other articles in Wikipedia are "dumbed down" to a "lowest-common-denominator" audience is not a viable reason to aim for that as a goal or to reduce the reliability and verifiability of an article that does actually provide references and citations for its statements. I object also strenuously to the claim that as an editor, I am not being "professional"; not only am I a professional editor by professional training and experience, but I am far more "professional" than many, many other editors who edit Wikipedia. I have identified myself clearly on my user page as an academic scholar, and that means that I am using professional scholarly academic knowledge, expertise, and experience in editing this article. To claim otherwise, is to violate WP:AGF. If the article meets the "criteria" of "good articles" (linked in my earlier comment: Wikipedia:Good article criteria), it is a "good article". The criteria are Wikipedia guideline criteria. The value judgment of "good" depends on applying those criteria, not other criteria that are being invented. If a sentence here or there could be clearer, fine, I suggest that one try to improve it. But to claim lack of "professionalism" or lack of "critical perspective" or some such derogatory claim, is unfair, unwarranted, unsupportable, and violates WP:AGF. The "trivial" nature of the corrections needed (as already stated by the reviewer) [is] not in keeping with these later claims. Let's not get carried away in this review. Let's stick to the facts. --NYScholar 07:17, 13 September 2007 (UTC) [added clarification in brackets. --NYScholar 08:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)] [Typographical correction in brackets. --NYScholar 16:11, 7 October 2007 (UTC)]

It seems like we're agreed on an appropriate level for the exposition, namely, college students and educated adults. Great!
My criticisms are indeed trivial, since they pertain to the liberal art of rhetoric; had they been more structural, they would be quadrivial, no? ;)
To clarify, I was impugning neither you nor myself when I said that we should strive to be professional and work to improve this article. It was merely a fond wish, prefaced by the hope that you would not judge me prematurely. Our goals are quite similar, methinks, namely conveying what you have written as clearly as possible to the largest possible audience, consistent with its accuracy. I am not exhorting you to dumb anything down. I am merely concerned with the clarity of the exposition, and whether the article has encyclopedic tone and content. Onwards, shall we? Willow 18:19, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Willow's GA review: the writing criterion

If we can agree on this, then the following initial comments pertain. I believe that the shortcomings mentioned below can be fixed, and I look forward to the article's progression to GA and thence to FA.

The criteria for a GA are that the article be (1) well-written, (2) factually accurate and verifiable, (3) sufficiently broad, (4) neutral point of view, (5) stable and (6) have images. The article clearly passes on (3), and criteria (5) and (6) are less important to me. I find minor lapses on (2) and (4) that will be discussed in the following section.

However, I do not believe that the present article is well-written for our target audience. I sincerely doubt whether several intelligent people of my acquaintance would be sufficiently interested in Pinter to parse certain unnecessarily arcane passages. More specifically, I find that

Regarding "our target audience" and other points, please see section below. Thank you. --NYScholar 00:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
  • The article has poor flow; the transitions between paragraphs and sections are not as tightly connected as they could be. I would also split some of the longer sections into more digestible pieces; in particular, the two sections of "Career" and the "Civic activities and political activism" section would benefit from more ruthless subdivision and organization.
  • Many sentences are overly long or overly complex in their construction. Please try to keep the number of dependent clauses per sentence to a minimum, and the number of independent clauses as well. If the reader has to stop after every sentence to parse it, that robs the article of flow and the reading of fun, and makes it difficult for people to remember the sense of what you wanted to convey. One example:


Actually, in terms of syntax, that is a "simple sentence" construction: subject-verb-predicate, with a series of items in the predicate. I really don't see that sentence as "overly long" or "overly complex in" its "construction". Often the sentences are they way they are so that the in-line citations will come at the end of a phrase or at the end of a sentence for greater ease of reference. Breaking up a sentence like that into, say, three sentences would require additional reference citations or notes. The "flow" of the sentences also relate to the ways that references appear. As far as "fun" goes: that is a highly-subjective category about which few will agree in Wikipedia. What is "fun" for one reader is not necessarily "fun" for another. It has no reference in the criteria for a good article (see links given below). --NYScholar 00:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Subsequently, I made the one sentence quoted into three separate sentences, each one followed by its citation. --NYScholar 01:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
  • There are too many parentheticals of ancillary details that do not advance the article materially. I would sacrifice small details, especially in the lead, such as "delivered on video", "on being awarded the Europe Theatre Prize" or "in a limited run". Similarly, the sentence


could be condensed to


That is not an improvement. The title of the work is as relevant as the title of Sleuth. To omit it does not improve the statement, which is specific. Another editor reverted that change. --NYScholar 00:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps not surprisingly, I find the shorter, more direct version easier to understand and more appropriate to the lead in its level of detail. As an aside, I have not changed your text in the article. Willow 05:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Key facts are sometimes put at the end of a complicated construction, instead of near the beginning for easier comprehension by non-academics. For example, consider the sentence


To me at least, the date is important, pithy and easily understood, whereas the noun-phrase "working class, native English-Jewish parents of Eastern-European ancestry" is difficult to parse for non-academics, unless it were spoken. How about the trivial rearrangement


or even


I changed the sentence to accommodate this "trivial" point. --NYScholar 00:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I hyphenated "working-class" since it's a noun-phrase being used an an adjective.

Someone reverted that; I restored "working-class," which is correct. --NYScholar 00:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Some phrases are too — hagiographic and unencyclopedic; thus, they fail the WP:WORDS criterion, specifically WP:PEACOCK and WP:WEASEL. The first example that leapt out at me was "a man of infinite complexity"; just because his official biographer says so, doesn't mean that we have to repeat such an unverifiable claim, right? Such phrases do not seem scholarly to me; they do not seem to have the proper tone of an encyclopedia. It seems like quoting from the dust jacket of a record album.
"Such an unverifiable claim" ("claim" is a Weasel word): This is a clear misinterpretation of WP:V (official policy) and specifically WP:V#Sources; WP:BLP#Sources. What editors must "verify" is that the statement as paraphrased or quoted comes from the source noted and that the source must be "reliable" WP:Reliable sources (guideline). The biographical content [point of view of the biographer] is thus "verified"; of course, this is the biographer's viewpoint; that is what is being documented: his viewpoint; it is a statement from a reliable source (the official biographer); in my own experience (forty years of research in this subject), it happens to be a convincing point of view. Nonetheless, I refer to WP:POV, which applies in WP:BLP#Well known public figures. Moreover, please do not take a phrase out of the context of the full sentence in which it appears. It is part of a larger statement and serves as an example of points of view on Pinter as a living person [by "Pinter and his supporters" responding to criticism mentioned in the preceding sentence: please review context]. It is a point of view on the subject of this biography by the subject's official biographer that appears in his authorized official biography. It is not "an unverifiable claim" as stated. So, no, that is not "right". It is actually useful in a lead in an article about a "controversial" well-known living public figure (BLP) to point out that there is "complexity" and that there are "contradictions" that one may expect to find in points of view on the subject because he is both "a man of infinite complexity" and "full of contradictions". There is an odd reading of that phrase in the above comment as if it were a value judgment when it is actually a statement of fact about the man. Billington's intensifier/adjective "infinite" is simply emphasis; it means literally that the man Harold Pinter is complex in many (not finite or determinable) ways; that complexity is actually reflected in the "ambiguity" of his work, one of its most well-known characteristics (as documented in this article on him). Earlier revisions of this article have already responded to the "hagiographical" comment (now archived). The section on "Public criticism" is an addition responding to it; the articles relating to that criticism are cited and listed in the "Works cited"; a "hagiographical" article omits does not cite such negative points of view on the subject as this one already does. Please consult the sources more carefully. Thanks. --NYScholar [added clarifications in brackets. --NYScholar 00:25, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]
I shortened the sentence. --NYScholar 01:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Occasionally, the sentences are ambiguously worded and defy visualization in concrete terms. For example, how should the reader interpret "culmination" in the sentence


I shortened the sentence. --NYScholar 00:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

My best understanding of your sentence was that Pinter used his long-practiced stagecraft to deliver a rhetorically powerful and deeply felt political speech; might that sentiment be conveyed more simply? I would also re-word the confusing word "both", and re-consider whether you need to say "prolific" and "increasingly" here. Willow 20:46, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Again, re: "My best understanding": see WP:NOR. The video of the speech is already documented and fully accessible at the Nobel Prize organization's website (as cited in the Selected bibliograpy, "Works cited", "resources"). Anyone who reads this article is capable of accessing the full video via those citations (video is fully accessible online). There are already many articles commenting on the speech's content and presentational characteristics (style of Pinter's delivery) listed as sources, which any reader can consult for their own additional information. The DVD provides the full Nobel Lecture "Art, Truth & Politics" as well; this is obviously an audio-visual resource accompanying the printed text (also accessible onine at the Nobel Prize site and various printed publications (e.g., PMLA, Faber and Faber; both cited too). I have already shortened the sentence. --NYScholar 23:42, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the pointers to my Swedish friends, but allow me to be more explicit. I did not fail to understand Pinter's speech, but rather your description of it, particularly as an "culmination" of three factors, of which two seemed only tangentially relevant. I was asking you to clarify your writing so that your intended meaning became clear even to those who are not experts on Pinter. You should not underestimate the advantages and perspective you have by having studied Pinter closely for over forty years; many thoughts obvious to you will not be so to many others. Willow 05:04, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

You seem to have missed: "I have already shortened the sentence." Thanks for your help, of course. --NYScholar 05:15, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Willow's GA review: neutrality and verifiability criteria

As mentioned above, I would advise you to be more understated and scholarly in your assessment of Pinter. Thus, you may wish to eliminate some intensifiers and redundancies (e.g., "voluminous" and "sharp critical acumen", respectively) that add extra words and sap credibility and intelligibility, rather than enhance them. For example, the lead sentence


could be re-written more simply as


'One of the most" is eliminated for brevity as an unnecessary intensifier. The Nobel Prize is covered below, and the detail of his stage name ("also known as David Baron") is ancillary. Similarly, replacing "more overtly" with "overtly" would greatly enhance the intelligibility of its host sentence.

Although referenced, a few passages seemed editorial and should be eliminated as POV, similar to "infinitely complex". One offensive editorial was "a small vindictive triumph for the disgruntled Vivien", again by Mr. Billington. Another by the same author was "many of us felt compelled to reply, in unison, 'No-o-o-o-o-o!'". These quotes, although referenced, are obviously unscholarly and do not belong in an encyclopedia.

Another editor reverted changes relating to this comment and several other changes made recently. This particular judgment about properly-documented (checked and verified) quotations from reliable sources as "editorial" and "POV" is a mistaken judgment not in keeping with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and WP:POV. Wikipedia cautions editors against making such value judgments of their own--see (WP:NOR)--about the published work of recognized scholarly authorities on the subject being used as sources in BLP. The quotation comes from the Harold Pinter Society Newsletter's published report of a scholar (Merritt) who attended the event and is providing a first-person account in that publication (distributed to Society members/subscribers both electronically and through the United States postal service mail). The quotation documents a first-person account of the audience's reaction to Pinter's (rhetorical) question in Turin, Italy, during his March 2006 interview by Michael Billington on the occasion of his receiving the Europe Theatre Prize. (Billington was the primary organizer of the related symposium.) --NYScholar 22:44, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia requires that its contents be informative and, as far as possible, objective. I refer you to the GA criterion (1), specifically WP:WORDS, which states that the article should not be "unnecessarily flattering or positive" and/or "uninformative". It is evident that the three cited quotations from Billinton are subjective, unscholarly and, in the judgment of this reviewer, uninformative about Pinter and more informative about his authorized biographer. I am similarly troubled by the following unreferenced assertion: "a label that people have applied repeatedly to his work, at times pigeonholing and attempting to tame it." Willow 04:52, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
[Added sources. By now, this is a very common perspective accepted in criticism about Pinter's work; "taming" is another way of saying "controlling" by means of "pigeon-holing"; "categorizing" is a means of making the new and unfamiliar more like the old and familiar; one categorizes the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar or comes up with a new label to stand for the unfamiliar characteristics and to maintain "control" over them; to make them less "unwieldy" so to speak. --NYScholar 11:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]

More generally, it's a pity that Pinter has had only one significant biographer, Billington, who appears to be strongly partial to his subject. Billington's singularity would seem to require us to cite his work to the exclusion of more balanced viewpoints. Billington is cited in this article at least nine times more often than any other author (by my count, 45 to Merritt's five citations). To me, this calls into question whether the present article is NPOV.

See above reply. The "it's a pity" is not in keeping with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. It is a fact that there is only one "official" biography (and biographer) of the subject, Harold Pinter (now entitled Harold Pinter) and that the biography is "authorized": see "Works cited". [Billington's biography [2007] supercedes all previous biographical accounts of Pinter's life--which are relatively few and quite dated.] Authorized biographies [of then-still-living persons] have the cooperation of their subjects and thus present facts about a subject's life that the subject himself or herself has checked, corrected and otherwise verified. Billington based his biography and his revised enlarged edition of it on many interviews with his subject (Pinter) and he cites the fact that Pinter read, commented on, and corrected it in the course of its development and subsequent publication. It is the "standard biography" of Pinter. That a Wikipedia editor considers this "a pity" is not relevant. To base this article on such a "point of view" of a Wikipedia editor would be to violate Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and to violate WP:NOR. This article strives for neutrality. When Billington is quoted, the quotations document what Billington writes in the biography. When he comments on the views of others, their articles are included in the "Works cited" for further verification of what they state. Anyone is free to read the sources himself or herself. There is also a list of "External links" with several other biographical accounts for further reference. --NYScholar 22:44, 12 September 2007 (UTC) [clarifications; tc. --NYScholar 01:27, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]
I recognize, and sympathize with, the difficulty of writing a biographical article for a subject for whom there is only one acceptable biography written by someone not impartial. I also recognize the difficulty of WP:NOR here. I further believe that our own biases are evident in our selection of quotations from the Billington biography. All that said, in the judgment of this reviewer, the article cannot be considered a good encyclopedia article if it repeats uncritically statements from a single not-disinterested source that seem "overly flattering", irrelevant to Pinter, or judgments of what cannot be known, such as the feelings/motivations of Ms. Merchant and Pinter's literary critics. Willow 04:52, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Re: such a broad and acontextual statistical comparison: the subjects of work by Billington and Merritt (e.g.) differ: Billington is a drama critic who is also Pinter's official biographer, and this Wikipedia article is a biography of Pinter (BLP), so his work is understandably cited frequently in it as he is the most authoritative and reliable source on the subject of Pinter's biography. Merritt is an academic scholar whose work is critical, metacritical (a critical study of Harold Pinter criticism), and bibliographical. It is cited to document statements pertaining to her publications primarily about those fields of expertise. Their joint expertise is being used cumulatively to document different kinds of statements in this BLP about a living author whose life and work crosses boundaries of literary genres, media, and disciplines. Obviously, in a BLP (biography of a living person), biographical statements will outnumber critical statements about the works. [Note again: Billington's Harold Pinter is an account of Pinter's life (biography) that includes considerable analysis of and commentary about his work; its original title is The Life and Work of Harold Pinter (see note citation to it and "Works cited").] The number of times that specific sources [Billington, et al.] are cited in the article relates mostly to the contexts in which they serve as documentation (sources). Such a count that does not take such different contexts into account is misleading. --NYScholar 01:21, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Over the next few days, I'll have more to add, as I find the time. Hopefully, this is enough grist for the mill! :) Willow 20:46, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Please see the reverts of some of your changes made by other editors (not I) and their editing summaries. Thank you. --NYScholar 22:44, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

You are mistaken, NYScholar; I have not changed your text in any respect. On the contrary, I prevented its being changed, by reverting two misguided edits by Emerson7 that I think would have perturbed your serenity. ;) Willow 04:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that you have misinterpreted my comment: I was referring to the fact that I had not been the one to revert anything that you may have changed prior to my coming along today: 157468986 Diffs: referring to those editing summaries by others.

Thank you for the diff. If you look closely, here's what happened. Emerson7 made, in my opinion, two misguided edits, which I reluctantly reverted. He undid my reversion, restoring his changes. Those were then re-reverted by another editor. I have never changed your text. Willow 06:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again for your assistance throughout. I don't agree with all that you say, particularly about Billington; it is not from lack of perspective but from perspective that I disagree. I work on other BLP in Wikipedia and my perspective is from editing them as well (over an extended period of time); mostly, I provide citations and references when others provide none or I correct problems in misleading presentations of citations and references, so I am very attuned to these concerns. I don't see the citations of Billington as in any way a violation of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Every citation clearly relates to identification of him as the official authorized biographer, and that is the means of establishing the source of his "point of view" in his statements about Pinter, the man and his work. A standard reference is what Wikipedia recommends that one use in biographies of living persons and other articles in Wikipedia: WP:V#Sources. One cannot impeach a standard reference if that is indeed what it is, and in this case, Billington is the standard biographical reference source regarding Harold Pinter. There are a great variety of other biographical resources provided via External links and the Selected bibliography; I do not see violations of neutral point of view in the article. --NYScholar 05:23, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
That is to say (again): Billington's book Harold Pinter is, in Wikipedia terminology, "a reliable published source" with an undisputed "reputation" for fact-checking, etc. as per WP:V#Sources. There is no source that has a stronger reputation as a biographical work on Pinter at this time. If you are going to impeach a source (and let me remind you that comments about Billington are also subject to WP:BLP), then you must provide some evidence from an at-least equally reliable published source. You have not done that. Your statements about Billington violate WP:NOR and possibly also WP:BLP (which applies to all of Wikipedia, including talk pages). Focus: on improving the article as opposed to talking about the subject matter (top template). Thanks again nevertheless! --NYScholar 05:26, 13 September 2007 (UTC) [added some words for clarity. --NYScholar 05:32, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]
For example, the last quotation in the current version of the lead is not by any reasonable measure an exaggeration; it is an accurate statement borne out by the accounts and reviews of Pinter's performance in Krapp's Last Tape: it was the ticket to get in London in October 2006. People flew from the U.S. and elsewhere in the world to the U.K. just to see the production and [according to their published comments] considered the experience was well worth the expense and inconvenience: published reviews are the source of Billington's generalization. One of Pinter's final performances was filmed and made into a DVD to be shown on British television, and the responses to its broadcast also bear out Billington's statement. His book was ready for distribution in April 2007 and presented at the conference in Leeds (Artist and Citizen: 50 Years of Performing Pinter), where conferees could purchase it "hot off the press"; and they did. (In providing references, I refer to my own copy of the book, which he gave me in Leeds.) --NYScholar 05:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC) [clarification. After this, logging out of Wikipedia again. --NYScholar 05:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]
You provide no reliable published source for this statement: "All that said, in the judgment of this reviewer, the article cannot be considered a good encyclopedia article if it repeats uncritically statements from a single not-disinterested source that seem "overly flattering", irrelevant to Pinter, or judgments of what cannot be known, such as the feelings/motivations of Ms. Merchant and Pinter's literary critics." Billington's statements about the feelings and motivations of Ms. Merchant are based on what Pinter himself told him in interviews; there are quotations from Pinter that are part of those statements. Pinter is the closest source one has about how he and his former wife felt about aspects of their personal experience, and Billington cites Pinter. He also cites others who back up what Pinter said; the generalization in Billington is backed up by quotations from a variety of interviewed sources and from Vivien Merchant's own statements to newspapers and friends (who are cited) at the time. If you have not consulted a copy of the book that is being cited or some other reliable published source disputing it, then what basis do you have for these charges? I say, none but your own conjecture, which just happens to be incorrect. --NYScholar 05:50, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
I think that it might be useful if you consulted Wikipedia guidance on the use of published biographies and autobiographies in BLP: WP:BLP#Sources. There is no basis for your charges of lack of neutrality about a biographer whose biography you have clearly not read. If Billington, as a biographer, is sympathetic to his subject, that is partly a result of his work on the subject, which, from his perspective, warrants his sympathy. But if Wikipedia editors make clear that they are citing an "authorized" "official" biography of a subject, then any reasonable reader should understand that the source of statements in the biography is the biographer.
If one wants to find reviews of the biography and to use them as sources for providing additional perspective on Billington's biography of Pinter, one is of course free to do so. But one needs to keep in mind that the subject of this article is Harold Pinter and not Michael Billington. Michael Billington provides his own perspective on the facts of Pinter's life that he has documented. That is what all biographers (and documentary filmmakers for that matter) do. Biography is a literary genre; it is a form of literature, and anyone can find out more about the nature of biographies by reading Biography. Editors must keep in mind that literary conventions (such as those pertaining to biographies) exist and that readers have means in Wikipedia about informing themselves about such conventions. --NYScholar 05:59, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Furthermore, I object most strenuously to your claim (and it is merely a claim) that in editing this article, I have provided references to Billington "uncritically"; to the contrary, I have been very careful, maintaining "critical perspective," in selecting what to quote and what not to quote in this article. I have also clearly identified the source of quotations and paraphrases by using coherent transitions and ample notes citations. There is no basis for that claim. It violates WP:AGF. --NYScholar 06:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
If you sincerely believe that it contributes to Pinter's biography to quote "a small vindictive triumph for the disgruntled Vivien", then I won't stop you. But let me dissuade you. Personally, I find the episode relatively trivial and unnecessary to recount here; I also worry that it makes Pinter seem ungenerous and even belies his "support" for Ms. Merchant. However, I also recognize my own bias that such one-dimensional characterizations cannot describe a real person's emotional state. Be that as it may, if you do want to include it, I ask that you clarify the original source of that assertion, e.g.,


That clarifies for the unwary reader that it's a characterization and not a fact like the speed of light. Is that an acceptable compromise?
Your characterization is actually incorrect, so it is not something that I can use. It is actually a fact that Vivien Merchant was both "disgruntled" and "vindictive" in her attitude and behavior relating to Pinter's affair with Fraser, with the separation (Pinter's moving out right after he admitted to the affair), and the divorce. Billington is reporting not inventing there. She made statements revealing those feelings (attitude) and doing that itself was one of her ways of retaliating (Pinter's comment that Billington quotes is actually quite mild; he says that he was surprised because she had said that she would not "do that" (speak to the press about their private life). So I don't think there is a basis to claim that Billington is providing "point of view" there; he's simply coming up w/ a description of already-well-reported facts (based on Merchant's own interview remarks at the time to the press, which were published). Your guessing about these things is not helping here. I removed the phrase, but it really is not what you state at all. --NYScholar 07:48, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
On the second point, I think we agree that "infinite" is not meant literally but merely as "very", in the same way that medieval Latin began to use the superlative as "very". (Perhaps there's a technical linguistic term for such inflation?) But do you see the danger that unwary readers will read it as written and take it as hyperbolic? As a compromise, I suggest that you should paraphrase slightly, e.g., "characterizes Pinter overall as a complex, abundantly contradictory man." which places the emphasis rightly on "contradiction". Does that sound good? Willow 06:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
I hear the "tone of voice" of Billington speaking "infinitely" there; it helps to have heard him speak; it's just a manner of speaking. "infinitely" is almost an oxymoron, since we really have no factual basis for "infinitely"; it is never really "literal"--can't be pinned down to a "finite" literal number or amount. It's a figure of speech (metaphorical). --NYScholar 07:48, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
For the remaining two points, I would drop the "No-o-o-o-o-o" statement altogether; it just seems, well, silly and unscholarly, and it doesn't contribute significantly to the depiction of Pinter himself. I would likewise drop the "tame" comment or at least provide a reference for it. As is, it comes across as belittling and petty; it's hard for me to imagine how it could be the reasoned conclusion of a scholarly study.
Sorry, but that is a statement reported by a scholar whose work is listed with the British Library and the Lilly Library in Pinter's website's links for "Academia and Libraries" in his official website; she is the Bibliographical Editor of The Pinter Review, and she is reporting on her first-hand experience of the audience's response; they shouted in unison a long drawn out wailing sounding "No," which is being represented graphically as "No-o-o-o-o" accurately. That is what it sounded like. It is really not proper for an editor to describe as "unscholarly" a scholar's account. The account is "scholarly" because it is written by a scholar. Value judgments by editors of Wikipedia are really irrelevant. It is neither "silly" nor "unscholarly"; it's just an accurate report of what the audience did at the time. Given your earlier statements about the (assumed) "target audience" not being "academic scholars", this comment seems contradictory. It gives a little life to the article to keep the description; it humanizes Harold Pinter, who was "beloved" by the audience who wanted to urge him not to give up writing plays because they love the plays. They themselves were a group of hundreds of scholars, critics, and dignataries, were in an audience celebrating his getting the Europe Theatre Prize, and their response is being accurately depicted. I may come up with a description for the "No-o-o-o-o-o" etc., but it is important to point out that the account was being sent by request to a readership of Pinter scholars (members of the Harold Pinter Society); to claim that it is "unscholarly" makes no sense; scholars are human beings too [Critics (including scholars) are "members of the audience" like anyone else (Norman Holland, The Dynamics of Literary Response [1968])] and they have feelings, and they were manifesting those feelings in their response to his rhetorical question. They said "No" in a very loud and encouraging drawn-out fashion [a kind of wail], trying to convince Pinter otherwise (to keep on writing plays). --NYScholar 08:33, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
As an aside, I can say sincerely that I've formed no opinion whether you personally are biased or uncritical towards Harold Pinter. How could I, on such a limited acquaintance? I only wished to express my judgment that the text of the article was employing quotes uncritically or unhelpfully for the article. I hope that you will likewise refrain from making premature judgments about me. Both of us should strive to be professional and focus on improving the article.
That's it for tonight; I'm going off to bed myself. 3) sleepy Willow 06:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Reviews of Billington's biography

Reviews of the revised enlarged edition entitled Harold Pinter are not in print yet or online for citing; once I find some I may cite them in this article. As I stated in an earlier note citation since deleted (due to prior comments and reviews to shorten the notes), it includees a new chapter (which I quote from and cite) and the Nobel Lecture text in an appendix. For some customer reviews (if one wants to do one's own "original research" as well as to read the book), one can consult online book sites like Amazon.com, e.g., Customer reviews. I think that I have been very judicious in selections of quotations from Billington's book; in the "Public criticism" subsection of the Honors section (where I was asked to place that section by an earlier reviewer/commentator), I have cited the very articles that Billington quotes from, so that one can read the contexts for his quotations in the articles. To quote from the articles is highly problematic, because, in some cases, they violate WP:BLP and online versions are posted in message boards and forums and blogs, which one cannot post as sources due to WP:BLP#Sources: they are not reliable sources, so the printed citation must suffice. People can search for non-permissible sources of the texts themselves, but one can only cite a reliable published source of the original publication. (If one goes way back in the editing history, one will see some problems of violations of WP:BLP previously corrected in this article. --NYScholar 06:47, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Vivien Merchant

Re: Vivien Merchant: there is no "gossip" being presented in this article. One can keep in mind that she is dead and thus WP:BLP does not apply. Nevertheless, one expects to be respectful, and I believe that Pinter himself, Billington in citing him and others, and I are being respectful of her memory. She herself contributed to tabloid articles by phoning the press or responding to press inquiries during the separation and divorce stage of her relationship with Pinter. The article called "People" from Time Magazine is a reliable published source of information about what she said [that is quoted in this article on Pinter]; it also contains a comment which I have not quoted; I removed it from an earlier version of this article: it's still apparently in the article Vivien Merchant note 2: It's a rather silly comment about her rival's foot size, and it is not appropriate for this encyclopedia article, in my view.

It was put into the VM article w/o a source; at first I took it out; then I found a source for it: to find the history, one has to click on newer edits for a bit via diffs: 62433801 and, e.g., 62436800. --NYScholar 08:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC) [provided links. --NYScholar 08:49, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]
Nevertheless, it is well known that Vivien Merchant was quite "vindictive" relating to the divorce, and that she did indeed say that she was going to sign the divorce papers, Pinter and Fraser went ahead and planned their wedding and reception, and then she refused to sign the papers at the last minute, and they were stuck with not being able to get married and having to hold the reception as a party prior to a wedding. (That was in newspapers at the time it happened, and all Billington is doing is generalizing about a news-documented fact.)
[I've removed the quotation, but not because it is incorrect or wrong or unprofessional to include. Just because it makes no difference to me whether or not it is there. It is in the source and people can read it there. (Added. --NYScholar 07:37, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]
Otherwise, I preferred to use the more general paraphrase about how grief-stricken she was at the affair and demise of the relationship, which is not "gossipy". Again, as an editor, one is trying to remain neutral but still compassionate and humane and trying to avoid gossip, to use reliable published sources of pertinent information.
Reliable published sources document the fact that Vivien Merchant was distraught over the break up of her marriage to Pinter (he talks about that quite a bit in comments to Billington quoted verbatim in the biography) and that, in effect, she drank herself to death after she realized that she was not going to get her husband back; in one quotation in a newspaper article (that I have not quoted in this article on Pinter), she asked if there was a "pill" that one could take called "husband" (it may still be in a note citation in Vivien Merchant). That pretty much says it all. Instead of pills, Vivien Merchant relied on alcohol to assuage her distress. (That is discussed in the biography by Billington.) I do not think that Billington exaggerates or misstates the situtation that he describes relating to the couple's breakup.
It is also well-documented that when she acted in Old Times in London (about 1971), she already had a drinking problem; it got worse after the split up of the marriage. I have not included all that in this article because the main focus of this article is its subject Harold Pinter and not his first wife. She has an article in Wikipedia devoted to her as a subject. --NYScholar 06:59, 13 September 2007 (UTC) [corrected. --NYScholar 07:01, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]
I'll add the following source to it when I can: "Death of Vivien Merchant Is Ascribed to Alcoholism", The New York Times 7 Oct. 1982, accessed 13 Sept. 2007; according to coroner's report based on a pathologist's report summarized by a doctor quoted in that NYT article, she "drank herself to death". --NYScholar 11:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Perspective on neutrality concerns

I believe that the neutrality concerns are secondary to the writing in resolving the GA nomination, so I'd like to work on the latter first. I also am happy to see that many of my concerns about overstatements have been resolved; thank you and well-done! Before moving on to main work of clarifying the writing, however, I'd like to clarify my concerns about neutrality. You may wish to consider them, not for passing the GA, but for the more important goal of making your hard-won prose more persuasive to general readers.

  • My principal concern has been that statements such as "infinite complexity" will seem hyperbolic to readers unused to such turns of phrase. For such readers, this will raise doubts about the trustworthiness of Billington's subsequent assertions, which would be unhelpful for an article that relies so heavily on his biography. I understand that Billington was merely using a figure of speech for "very", rather than hyperbole; however, I am suggesting that the lead should be written with skill to avoid the appearance of hyperbole. Alas, we live in an all-too-cynical world, where many might say, "Oh, the biographer is just hyping his subject to boost his book sales, just as producers promote their movies in glowing, unverifiable terms." Do you recognize the danger? I feel that the article has excellent content and is well-researched, and it would be a pity if we inadvertently caused a cohort of readers to doubt it. Therefore, as a fellow editor and not a GA reviewer, I encourage you to be conscious of such appearances, and be understated, removing such intensifiers (e.g., "highly controversial") and redundancies (e.g., "sharp critical acumen") when they are not necessary.
  • As an encyclopedian, I have a lingering uneasiness with depending so heavily on a single biography. Suppose that we were writing about Bertolt Brecht, George Orwell or George Bernard Shaw; would we be content with a single, friendly biography written with the subject's imprimatur? However, I won't hold up the GA on that account, since I appreciate that the source is clearly referenced, and that there is no feasible alternative at the present. Let's reconvene in fifty years and see how things stand! :)
  • I also have misgivings about the encyclopedic notability of the "resounding No", although I won't let it stand in the way of the GA. On the one hand, I agree with NYScholar that it nicely illustrates Pinter's fervent fandom and their despair over receiving no more plays. However, I ask myself whether someone with no emotional investment in Pinter would find the episode noteworthy. I suppose so. By analogy, I could imagine that Wikipedia might cover the fans' reactions to the breakup of the Beatles, to Sarah Bernhardt's forty years of "farewell tours", or to the funeral of Walther von der Vogelweide (now there was a wild time! ;), although none of these gets much coverage at present (at least after a cursory search).

Anyway, I've flogged that dead horse far too long; sorry about that! On to the writing! :) Willow 19:21, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I found the above section helpful. I've made albeit minor changes based on it (and earlier comments). (I hadn't seen the section below or read it then or read it yet.) As I have to do other work outside of Wikipedia, responding to what you (Willow) suggest may not occur just now. --NYScholar 20:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

How to tackle the writing?

I recognize that writing is often a matter of taste and I'm conscious of the ancient adage, de gustibus nihil disputandum est. However, I'm hopeful that we'll agree on most changes, since they are likely to be "trivial", such as grouping related ideas into paragraphs, ordering related paragraphs sequentially, breaking up long sentences and long sections into more digestible pieces, and that sort of thing. Although I'm obviously not a Pinter scholar with forty years experience, I can speak with authority about what is easy to understand for a college-educated person who is not au courant with the conventions of literary scholars. Together, I'm sure that we can find a mutually beneficial solution! :)

I propose the following approach. Rather than debating every minute change in detail, why don't we change one section at a time? I'll make a few "trivial" rearrangements, which you can accept, revert or amend; we'll Talk it over until we reach a consensus version for that section. Thence to the next section, and so on to the end of the article. Does that sound agreeable? I pledge to maintain accuracy, and promise to be affable and reasonable. I hope you will likewise try to imagine how someone might fail to understand your prose (a difficult task for everyone, I know).

As an aside, I promise not to ask you to change your reference style, except in cases where it is unclear which source is being referred to. Agreed? Willow 19:49, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a feasible plan to me. --NYScholar 20:04, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Editing perspective

Some information that might be useful to Willow and others as reviewers in understanding my viewpoint on revising this article from the beginning (around June 2006): This article was (in my view) originally very underdeveloped at that time. As I am a specialist in this field, who publishes on the subject in peer-reviewed publications, I did not involve myself in editing it and was just a fairly casual editor in Wikipedia on other subjects of mostly non-professional interest to me up to that point.

Several months after Pinter won the Nobel Prize in Literature, however, I realized that a great number of people all over the world might be searching for information about him and that the Wikipedia article would be high on a Google or other search engine's results (It is generally the second site that comes up after Pinter's own website).

Reading the article more closely (I had mostly ignored it up to that point), I became concerned that so many people throughout the world might be coming to this article and (then) finding an article that (at that time) did not represent Pinter's Wikipedia:Notability adequately or accurately. I began to try to improve the article for the general reader (including college and university students, who frequently use Wikipedia as a starting point in their studies and research).

[See 61380716 Diffs: my first edits involved a section previously called "Miscellaneous" (which seemed to contain some unsourced "trivia") and which had caught my eye. Scroll up for some discussion of that material, now placed in Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work. "Early life" particularly contained misinformation about Pinter's personal background (family heritage) that appears all over the internet and that I thought needed correction. Eventuallly, I corrected it. (I was still a relatively-inexperienced Wikipedia editor and discovering Wikipedia's editing policies and guidelines as I went along, reading up on them over an extended period of time.) --NYScholar 22:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]
At that point in time, the article was mostly undocumented (unsourced), with missing citations but no missing citations template. It lifted material from sources without attribution and it repeated unverified material from unreliable and unattributed internet sites. --NYScholar 22:06, 13 September 2007 (UTC)]

Given the way Wikipedia works, others of course edit this article as well, and over the past year and a quarter, I have had this article on my watch list out of concern for occasional vandalism or occasional mistakes (some generally unintended) creeping into the article. My concern is for the accuracy and reliability of both the content and its sources (citations, bibliography). Of course, as an academic with so many years of experience working on Pinter (since 1967), I work very hard to maintain what Wikipedia requires: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view in material that I add or delete or attempt to improve in the article. I appreciate the perspective that a review of this article is bringing to it.

Unfortunately, I have extremely-limited time, and I have to get back to my professional work outside of Wikipedia. I will check this article when I can. There may be delays in my responses, as I've stated before. Thank you (and others) for your assistance and suggestions in improving the article. I appreciate it. --NYScholar 21:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your gracious and enlightening letter, NYScholar! I appreciate very much where you're coming from and what you've done, and I'll do my best to gratify your faith in me. I too have many responsibilities right now, especially with my family coming to visit shortly, so I'm grateful for your suggestion that we take things slowly. The article will be like a fine wine, gradually ripening to its fullest flavor. :) Willow 11:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Writing discussion

Lead

Dear NYScholar,

I've begun with some rearrangements to the first two paragraphs of the lead; I hope that you like them! For me at least, they made the text easier to follow — thanks! :) Willow 11:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

PS. I didn't change the content (I think), but two phrases seemed like they might benefit from more "pith" and definition; what do you think?

I still have to take a look at those (as I didn't notice changes in those parts; you may have edited a slightly-earlier version than the last one that I had edited. See my editing summary re: a few tweaks. I took out some details that lengthen the lead I think unnecessarily and generalized in a manner that is in keeping with the source cited (Billington); Pinter gave a few interviews (cited in the "Selected bibliography" around the same time 2005-2006, in which he reiterates his intentions to continue his political activism (which takes the form of essays, speeches, and signing petitions for the most part) and writing poetry; the sentence I've come up with attempts to generalize based on those sources but citing Billington for the phrase "'keep fighting'" from a letter; it's also the title of his "Afterword: 'Let's keep fighting'" (the chap. of the book Harold Pinter from which the page number cited comes). --NYScholar 12:11, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
This manner of editing seems to work out fairly well. I have to go offline, but I'll check back tonight perhaps. --NYScholar 12:11, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I've made some changes, mostly rearrangement for coh.; added citations, etc. --NYScholar 00:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
I think that the new emphasis of the last paragraph of the lead may resolve the problems that you (Willow) expressed earlier re: usage of Billington for otherwise-undocumented biographical information. --NYScholar 01:48, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
I've also added a link to an online book review of Billington's book for a perspective on it. If or when the book (now entitled Harold Pinter) gets its own article in Wikipedia, then further perspectives on it might be added and cross-linkable to this article. Until then, this helps to indicate that secondary sources have reviews that place them in perspective and might signal readers to seek out other reviews on their own. --NYScholar 04:24, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi NYScholar, and thanks for those changes! :) I think they do improve the article, don't you? Now that my family has wandered off again, I have a little more time to devote. I finished the lead section, with what I hope were minor changes throughout. However, there were a few sentences that might bear further work, making them more specific and factual. For example, I wasn't sure whether the 26 screenplays are all original Pinter stories, or the adaptations from others' novels? Also, I'm not clear how a "dramatic sketch" differs from a stage play, or how dramas written for radio and television differ from screenplays. I'm still also hazy on what we're meant to understand from the "culminates" sentence. Thanks for your patience with me! Willow 21:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your efforts; I've made some changes which I believe have strong rationales. Corrections, order of priority, coherence and so on. I really think the Nobel Prize paragraph belongs close to the beginning of the lead; it is also visually most helpful there (opposite the infobox where it is). Some of the changes that you made introduced errors of fact.
"Dramatic sketch" is a common dramatic term that playwrights use often as descriptions of the work near its title: E.g., "An evening of dramatic sketches" is how a performance of such sketches might be described; or they are called "revue sketches" if part of a "revue"; they often are performed together as a group or as "openers" for longer plays by other authors or the authors themselves. The works have a separate listing in Pinter's "Plays" section of his website (though [note well] there is an error in that "The New World Order" is listed as a "play" there, although when first performed it was called a "sketch" (1991). [In saying in interviews that he has written "29 plays" and asking "isn't that enough?" Pinter is not counting "The New World Order" as a play. So it is clear that he does not consider it a play; he knows that it is a "dramatic sketch"; it takes 8-10 mins. to perform; some of [those other "dramatic sketches" are also] very short--10 mins., e.g., in performance; they are not "plays" by virtue of length and style and focus. They are often "curtain raisers" in length for longer works. "The New World Order" was the "curtain raiser" for the [London première] of the play Death and the Maiden, by Ariel Dorfman, for e.g.)] [Some clarifications in brackets added later throughout. --NYScholar 06:18, 19 September 2007 (UTC)]
By saying that he has written "29 plays" Pinter is not including "Other Places" (which is really the name of a production of three other plays and/or sketchs already listed and not always the same three: e.g., Family Voices, A Kind of Alaska, and "Victoria Station" (a sketch); once the three included One for the Road); the 29 do not include "A New World Order" or two collaborative works--Remembrance of Things Past (co-written [with Di Trevis], adapt. of The Proust Screenplay (his screenplay adapt. of Proust's novel; never filmed; dir. on stage by Trevis in 2001-2002 season at the RNT); and Voices (collab. w/ composer James Clarke). He is including only plays that he is the sole author of and only those which are technically called "plays" and not "(dramatic) sketches". --NYScholar 22:46, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
If you are not sure of something, please don't change it; I am sure of what I have written (it is sourced via the sources in the "Works cited" and the website and external links) and the cross-listed sections of the article that now have their own articles (like "Works of Harold Pinter" and "Selected bibliography for Harold Pinter" and "Honors and awards to Harold Pinter" in Wikipedia). "Culminates" is just the dictionary definition; the previous work led up to the Nobel Prize and the Lecture, so the Lecture is "the culmination of" it or that work "culminates" in (ends in) the Lecture. You asked earlier for that sentence to be rewritten and I changed the phrase to an active voice verb form. I think it is clear. (Did you look up "culminates?") Culminate is a common verb form. It also suggests that the Lecture is a highlight of more than one aspect of his life and work (creative works and political activities--see the title: "Art, Truth & Politics" in conjunction with the home page quotations from himself on his website, which were there before he was awarded the Nobel Prize and which he quotes in the Nobel Lecture. The Lecture serves as a summary of many of his earlier essays, speeches, and dramatic works as well; he draws quotations from them or paraphrases them directly. That is why there are cross-links to some of the works throughout this Wikipedia article; one can see the connections if one follows the links and, thus, one can see how the those earlier works and work "culminate in" the Lecture. (The Lecture serves as a summary of earlier works and activities: "culminate" is indicating that.) --NYScholar 22:30, 18 September 2007 (UTC) [added threading and further expl. No time to corr. typo. errors in talk page comment due to other work. sorry if some remain. --NYScholar 22:35, 18 September 2007 (UTC)]
"culminates" is used the same way in the example given in following defintion:"Culminates". --NYScholar 23:46, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
"v.tr. To bring to the point of greatest intensity or to completion; climax: The ceremony culminated a long week of preparation." --NYScholar 23:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC) [I changed the present tense to past tense; maybe that will be clearer for Willow [as per this definition's example. When speaking of literary texts (incl. speeches), it is customary to use present tense, but past tense is fine here and perhaps clearer. --NYScholar 00:26, 20 September 2007 (UTC)]
Since there really is nothing "wrong" with the lead, I don't see why we can't just leave it as is. --NYScholar 06:18, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Some of the recent edits have led to inaccuracies of emphasis and problems in matching of citations to the statements; I've corrected these errors. [sign. lost.] --NYScholar 05:43, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Review

If a review is currently underway, could the reviewer (Willow?) please add that information to the listing in the nominations page; if reviewing, the reviewer really should just make comments and not engage in editing the article (please see the top message regarding a review). Otherwise, it will not be possible to maintain neutrality as a reviewer.

I have already responded to the comments about the article. I do not think that the kind of editing that is occurring to the lead since I responded to the comments is really helping to "improve" the article. As I stated, the lead is accurate; the changes seem to introduce inaccuracies of emphasis.
Re: reviewers: see top template: "If you have not contributed significantly to this article, feel free to evaluate it according to the good article criteria and then pass or fail the article as outlined on the nominations page."
If the "reviewer" has "contributed significantly to this article," then I don't see how he/she is going to be able to "evaluate it according to the good article criteria and then pass or fail the article as outlined on the nominations page." (Please see that page. Thanks.) --NYScholar 01:12, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
In Wikipedia's good article review process, it seems that getting involved in editing an article precludes being able to evaluate (judge) it fairly. So I would suggest that if the reviewer (Willow) does want to continue to participate in the review process, that it would be better to refrain from editing it and to just make comments. Thanks. --NYScholar 05:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

E.g. the adjective "voluminous" is accurate: see e.g. voluminous. The works cited in the article are the basis for statements in the lead. The details are in the main body of the article. Also, the "Nobel Prize" announcement is done in short form in its "Citation", which is cited in this article in both short and long form via the notes citations. "Bibliographical Notes" contains the long form; it is "excerpted" on the Nobel Prize webpage dedicated to the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature award to Harold Pinter and in news articles (as cited). Please don't change that; its emphasis is accurate. There is no reason to detract from the Swedish Academy's own presentation of its rationale for awarding to Nobel Prize in Literature to Harold Pinter; to do so violates Wikipedia:Neutral point of view; to quote the citation accurately is within Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. The lead refers to the now-more-detailed section on "public criticism" of the award; it needs to do so in neutral terms and not to emphasize the points of view of the critics, who are a minority point of view in relation to the greater number of praisers of the award. To change that presentation skews this article in an inaccurate manner. --NYScholar 01:08, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I had noted that requirement of reviewers, but I had felt that my modifications didn't change the content significantly, being "trivial", no? Therefore, my intention had been to promote the article to GA status as soon as its intelligibility concerns had been addressed. I see now that User:JayHenry has arrived to take over the review, which hopefully resolves that concern. I still feel that a danger for this article is that its content may not be as easily intelligible to the majority of its readers as it could/should be, which would diminish the value of an otherwise excellent article. I'm sure that you, its author, understand your text and its subject perfectly, but please try to imagine how others might go astray. When I make changes, I recognize that they might be imperfect, but I hope that you will understand that they represent sincere areas of concern, and will pause to consider how that concern might be addressed to everyone's satisfaction. Willow 21:59, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Some additional revisions

In response to some earlier comments, I have added an image, some additional cross-refs. to parts of other Wikipedia articles, and some subsection headings throughout. --NYScholar 05:39, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

[Re: the "nine performances" of Krapp's Last Tape; ten dates were listed originally, but a power outage/lighting problems in the theater led to the cancellation of one listed performance, so, although that one was re-scheduled, there were still only nine performances in all instead of the ten dates listed originally in the Royal Court webpage. --NYScholar 19:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)]. [Later, I may try to find another source to cite re: this point; to double check against my Oct. 2006 memory of it for accuracy. --NYScholar 19:40, 23 September 2007 (UTC)]

Hold

I've placed the GA nomination "on hold." The research is probably already Featured Article quality, and to me, that's by far the important part of the criteria. I think the article needs stylistic fixes to fully satisfy the GA criteria (and once these fixes are implemented, I think it's a relatively short trip to featured article.) I'll give an overview review now, and come back with more detailed comments later in the day. I know some editors appreciate when a reviewer jumps in and helps. Others prefer reviewers to stay neutral. I have no strong preference either way; I think there's validity to either approach. I am happy to help with improvements, but also more than willing to "stay neutral" if that's preferred. JayHenry 16:06, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Good article on hold

This is how the article, as of October 1, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: As far as WP:WIAGA some stylistic fixes needed. Readability is lost in long and sometimes dense paragraphs. The lead section can be reduced, since much of it is redundant with the body.
2. Factually accurate?: From what I can tell, it's extremely well-referenced and researched. Currently the article uses two citation systems (Harvard referencing and footnotes). This doesn't bother me so much, but Featured Article reviewers will probably require the use of only one system.
3. Broad in coverage?: Some editors might make the case that this article goes into unnecessary detail. I'm going to re-read and ponder this.
4. Neutral point of view?: I don't see any neutrality problems.
5. Article stability? No stability problems.
6. Images?: Wikipedia has a really idiosyncratic and rigid process of claiming fair use. I can fix myself, if authors prefer.

— JayHenry 16:06, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Note: I've not yet read the above discussion because I didn't want to bias my initial impressions of the article. --JayHenry 16:06, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Please consult prior review discussion as archived at good articles (links above) Harold Pinter, which links to "here" Harold Pinter in Archive 28. [Added links; there are links to prior discussion to follow as well: see templates above and discussion just linked. Thanks. --NYScholar 19:32, 1 October 2007 (UTC)]
re: (1): the lead was expanded from a short lead as per earlier reviewers' comments and requests. It is is counter-productive for new reviews to contradict old ones. A lot of time devoted to responding to the earlier reviewers' and others' requests for revisions will be lost if the new reviewers do not consult prior discussions. It is not a question of bias; it is a question of follow-through and continuity in the editing process. The revisions have been going on for an extended period of time in response to earlier comments. Often there are contradictory requests. Please do not add to this problem. Thanks. --NYScholar 19:06, 1 October 2007 (UTC) [Prior to logging out of Wikipedia to do pressing work, I have moved a small part of the lead to the main body, where it serves as some dev. and also as a trans. to next sec. It was added originally to the lead in response to prior reviewer's (Willow's) comments. I think it is fine to have it in main body, however. --NYScholar 19:55, 1 October 2007 (UTC)]
[Note: What this reviewer is perceiving as "redundant" was intentional emphasis required by previous reviewer(s), who wanted the lead to reflect the content of the body more than it did originally (according to them). Responding to their requests required that kind of additional development in the lead. Going back and forth is tiring, and I would appreciate it if the current reviewer(s) would consult the editing history and previous discussions to see that changes made were as earlier requested. --NYScholar 19:58, 1 October 2007 (UTC)]
Re (2): referencing system: this article does not use "Harvard referencing"; it adapts MLA Style Manual to Wikipedia style guidelines (as already discussed a number of times in prior discussion). I have responded to earlier comments on this by earlier reviewers. References are notes citations, using "content notes" when helpful for readers. The "Works Cited" list is what the short refs. key to (MLA); parenthetical refs. are part of MLA format but are used only when the refs. would be very short; links to online sources are provided in notes for convenience of readers. [See, e.g., MLA Style Manual#In-text citations.] See the Selected bibliography for Harold Pinter and its editorial interpolation(s) re: dates accessed/checked. There is no point in reviewing this aspect of the article without consulting all the prior discussion. I simply do not have time to change the article for each reviewer's comments, especially when they do not take account of the prior reviewer's requests. I've done what I can here. Changes in the formatting of the notes citations will screw up the entire article as there is a coherence to them that will be lost if the notes are changed. Please see all cross-references in the article; sections of this article have already been split off into separate articles for the convenience of readers as per earlier comments as well.
Coordinating notes with the "Works Cited" (in "Selected bibliography") and "External links" section has taken a lot of work. This is not an article to review without consulting prior discussions and reviews. To do so will set back a lot of work. (All references used in this article have been checked and verified.) [Updated. Please see comment also in nominations page. Thank you. --NYScholar 19:25, 1 October 2007 (UTC)]
Re: (6) images: they are already used within Wikipedia guidelines: click on the images pages; the image of Pinter in the infobox is from Wikipedia Commons; the others are used to illustrate the sections that they discuss; click on each image for related information. Images have already been discussed in prior nominations discussions (archived) as well. Please consult those discussions. Thank you. --NYScholar 19:28, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
This was still listed as a page actively in need of GA review, which is how I found the article and left my comments. If this was incorrectly listed, I apologize, and will gladly remove the article from that page. It certainly was my plan to further examine the history of the article and the talk page further before reviewing, but I wanted to leave my broad impressions first. I have, in fact, come here to help if you will let me. --JayHenry 19:36, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I am logging out of Wikipedia; I just wanted to point you to the archived discussions because they deal with the items that you have mentioned. In my view (having done so much work on this article to make it a well-documented article), it would be counterproductive (as I said) not to consult its prior discussions of earlier reviewers' comments. This process really cannot be done in a vacuum. (My viewpoint.) Please see my earlier replies to Willow above, who is the most recent one to "review" this article; that review was not listed as such but it appears to have been an ongoing review. Thanks. --NYScholar 19:41, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Re: images, I'm sorry this is such a convoluted process. Wikipedia requires specific declamation for each article in which a fair use image will be used. As I said above, I am happy to fix fair use rationales, if you'd like. --JayHenry 19:39, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Please try. Thank you. (I will be logged out of Wikipedia, doing pressing work. Thank you again for your assistance.) --NYScholar 19:42, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I do understand your concern at my initial comments. I'll read previous discussions quite carefully before making any further comments. Usually, articles aren't in the middle of an extensive review like this when they're on the GA page, so I apologize for the confusion caused by my wandering (blundering?) in like that. --JayHenry 20:39, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I made some tweaks on the image fair use rationales. As I said, quite trivial. The reason for the changes is simple -- Wikipedia has so many fair use images that they are routinely swept by bots. One of the things the bot looks for is the "Fair use rationale for XXXXX." If the article doesn't have the text, the bot will flag the image. It's quite frustrating on images that do have rationales, but on the other hand, the project has so many images that bots are the only way to keep track. I don't think we'll have any problem with images now. --JayHenry 01:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Lead redux

I would like to support User:NYScholar's comment about the lead being OK in length. WP:LEAD recommends a length of 4 paragraphs for this type of article, and notes that

The lead should be capable of standing alone as a concise overview of the article, establishing context, summarizing the most important points, explaining why the subject is interesting or notable, and briefly describing its notable controversies, if there are any.

which I think the present lead does do, don't you agree? I personally find the first paragraph a little too intricate to follow easily, which I will try to amend by grouping the play-writing/authoring sentences together, separately from other activities such as acting. I also find the East Anglia reference perhaps too detailed for the lead; perhaps it could be placed in a footnote? Willow 22:26, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

PS. Elegant finesses, User:NYScholar! :) The wording of the lead reads very well now, at least to me. I still have a preference for swapping the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs — which would improve the flow for me — but we may just agree to disagree on that point. I have to dash off to less scintillating work, but I'll come back tomorrow. I'm sorry for being so sporadic in my edits/reviewing, but the article has never been far from my mind over the past week and I'm still confident that we can make it really fine! :) Willow 23:10, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

There were problems created by some of those edits; I corrected them (what were previously 4 paragraphs became 5; citation error, etc.) The logic of the order of the paragraphs follows priority of importance and is coherent. Some of the changes made the connected source citation(s) incoherent. The format is currently accurate and coherent. (I have to go back offline.) [Willow: Please read up and indicate whether or not you are a "reviewer" of this article. If you are a reviewer, involving yourself in editing it is contrary to "good article" review procedures. Please post your review status on the good article nomination page listing. Thank you.] --NYScholar 23:02, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Ummm, please see the note above about trivial changes. I believe that I can act as an impartial reviewer here, and I think that I've done so, no? Don't you think it's faster and more efficient if I make a trivial change than if I tell you, "Clarify this or that point." which may be perfectly clear to you? However, I've no objections if JayHenry takes over as the official GA reviewer. Willow 23:10, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Rather than the article re: "trivium", I suggest consulting WP:Edit, which defines the differences in Wikipedia between "minor" changes and "major" ones. I often think that my changes are "minor" when others find them more "major", so I'm trying to be more careful in marking my editing summaries (my default is "m" for minor). Sometimes I have to come back to redefine a previous edit bec. my "m" posted before I remembered to remove the check mark in "This is a minor edit": "what's this" next to that sentence links to the guidelines re: minor edits as well. --NYScholar 09:14, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Some of the previous edits created incoherence in the lead (in my reading of it) and citation error; I corrected them. I really do know this subject and its sources; when sentences are separated from the context, errors occur in the way the citations are linked to the content of the sentences. There is nothing wrong with the lead as I edited it; it is coherent and readable. I do not understand why thse changes are being made. "Improving" an article means making it "better"; the word "better" contains within it a value judgment (good, better, best); such value judgments are subjective, depending on the knowledge, experience, and perspectives of those doing the perceiving (reading). We are aiming for neutrality of presentation here. If the lead meets the criteria for policies pertaining to living persons in Wikipedia WP:BLP, and other core policies, like WP:V#Sources, and others linked in the template at top of this page (WP:BLP) and it meets the "good article" criteria, as I think it already does, I do not see the need for these changes. I have already explained why the paragraphs in the lead are in the order they are in; the sentences within the paragraphs have coherence, and there are transitions within and among paragraphs that are being lost with these "trivial" changes; if they are "trivial," there is really no need to make them (in my view). Please scroll up and read previous discussion and responses to previous comments. Thanks. --NYScholar 23:50, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Please review the guidelines for reviewers of good articles; they say not to get involved in editing the article. The repeated changes that create new errors in the article are making it difficult to move forward. Please leave the lead as I corrected it. It is currently being reviewed. Thank you. --NYScholar 23:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm very glad that you kept most of my changes, so the effort wasn't in vain. I think the lead has been indeed improved by our combined efforts, don't you agree? We might never have hit upon some of those felicitous wordings. :) As an aside, I do not presume to have your intimate knowledge of Pinter; however, I am so bold to say that I can evaluate the intelligibility of your writing more impartially, particularly as a representative of lay-people who are college-educated but not experts in Pinter or literary scholarship. We agreed that the article is not intended for Pinter scholars alone, did we not? It would be a pity if the article were unnecessarily taxing to parse, don't you agree?
I'll pose a question to some knowledgeable people about whether it constitutes a conflict of interest to tweak word/sentence order and still pass a GA; I do appreciate the the danger of the slippery slope, although I feel that my impartiality hasn't been compromised. But if Jay is willing to take over the reviewer role, that should render the question academic; he can pass the article instead. Willow 00:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I appreciate Willow's help throughout. I'll have to look at some of the newer changes later; as Willow knows, we have the same goals: to make the article a "good article" (though I do have problems with the subjectivity of "good" as it is so variable) as pertains to the six criteria. I have looked at Willow's other work in Wikipedia, and it is very impressive. Together we have improved the article in the past, I think. [After making some additional changes], I'll leave it for a while and look at it again over the next few days. If I see factual or documentation errors, I will correct them in due course. --NYScholar 00:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC) [updated. --NYScholar 01:38, 2 October 2007 (UTC)]
After making those changes, I figured out a way to reorder the paragraphs the way Willow prefers while maintaining coherence among sentences within them, shifting some material for that purpose. I think this lead works well. --NYScholar 17:47, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Length/Split off section

Please see new section (in dev.); I've split off a section to Harold Pinter and academia. The length was approaching 90Kb, and, following some earlier editors' (see archived discussions), I've split this section off too. This way it can be developed further if needed. --NYScholar 23:50, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

This was actually one of the suggestions I was going to make. I'm always loath to remove information from Wikipedia -- splitting long articles into sub-articles is almost always a better option. --JayHenry 23:53, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
This was a change that I had been contemplating making for a couple of weeks; I just decided to do it given some of previous mention of length and detail. I hope this helps. Sorry to have to come back in and out; I have so much to do outside of Wikipedia that I am afraid to get re-involved in "trivial" changes, and I've just tried to make this larger change, which I think may improve the article in the longer run. Thanks again. Thanks to Willow for all the hard work as well. I greatly appreciate it (even if we do not always agree as to what is "better"; see comment above re: the subjectivity of such value judgments. What is "good" "better" and "best" really is not an objective matter and does depend on one's editorial knowledge, experience, and perspective on the subject/content and its documentation [in my view]). --NYScholar 00:01, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Willow: If you are/were/want to be the "official reviewer", it would be very helpful if you would update the "good article" nominations page to indicate that you are a reviewer of this article. See my earlier request (scroll up); there is a format for indicating that one is a reviewer. The reason that JayHenry did not realize that you were reviewing this article is because you had not indicated that you are/were/are in the nominations page listing. Once you declare (as you did earlier) that you are a reviewer of the article, then the guidelines for reviewing pertain, one of which is not to be one who repeatedly (or heavily) edits the article (as I read those guidelines for reviewers). I am not a reviewer of this article; I am a longtime contributor to it. --NYScholar 00:10, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for updating the nominations page; after doing quite a bit more work relating to "Works cited" list and notes in this article, I had gone over to update the length amount (currently 77Kb), which is some reduction; I added the little template for under review so that the threading would work better with your comment there. Hope you don't mind. --NYScholar 08:10, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I've also created Art, Truth & Politics, splitting off a section of the article Harold Pinter, providing cross-references in both this article and the split-off article, reducing length to just over 60kb. I've updated the length in the nominations page to reflect this revision. I've also updated the fair use rationale (following procedure by JayHenry in another image page). --NYScholar 11:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Added MoS template

This template was provided in a comment on JayHenry's user talk page. I've made some use of it for convenience of editors/reviewers. Please note the previous link to MLA Style Manual#In-text citations for help with understanding that short references to authors' last names (and short titles if there are more than one work cited by same author/s) are used with MLA Style Manual citation format both in in-text parenthetical references and in footnotes/endnotes (content notes). MLA Style Manual citation/bibliographical format enables a mixture of these for convenience of readers; the cited sources are keyed to a "Works cited" list in Selected bibliography for Harold Pinter.

Main article: MLA Style Manual § "Section 6.5 USING NOTES WITH PARENTHETICAL DOCUMENTATION"

[added cross-ref for reviewers' aid. --NYScholar 22:50, 3 October 2007 (UTC)]

Please note: (as explained above and in the archived talk page discussions:) Due to differences between Wikipedia Manual of Style for external links and MLA Style's provision of URLs within angle brackets (not active links), this article's format follows Wikipedia's use of active links (within square brackets as per MoS). To provide the angle-bracket URLs would be redundant, since the URLs do show up online when a mouse highlights them. The angle bracket URLs could be added at the very end of each item listed in the Works cited list if wanted (e.g., for printouts), but I don't think it is necessary.

Though I didn't think them necessary, to be consistent with MLA format in "Works Cited" list, I have provided the URLs in angle brackets (MLA Style format) [in Selected bibliography for Harold Pinter, which contains the "Works cited" section for this article]; they follow the rest of the citaiton as prescribed in that format. They are useful for those who print out articles and want to see the actual URLs otherwise in embedded external links in Wikipedia's link format. --NYScholar 09:12, 3 October 2007 (UTC) [Updated. --NYScholar 09:14, 3 October 2007 (UTC)]

Punctuation of dates published and dates accessed following MLA Style Manual format may seem unfamiliar to newcomers to MLA Style. (I provided some examples in the "Works cited" in MLA Style Manual#Works cited. The MLA Style does not require the word "Accessed" (or "Retrieved") before the date of access and no period interrupts the access date and the URL within angle brackets.] It differs from Wikipedia's citation templates: one reason why Wiki citation templates are not being used. (There are other reasons for avoiding use of them in this article too: the citation templates introduce other punctuation and documentation errors.) Also MLA Style uses normal order of authors' names in footnotes, not reversed order; in MLA only the bibliography ["Works cited"] list has reversed order for purpose of alphabetization; unlike APA Style format for citations; both use dates close to authors' names] in bibliog. entries, items are simply alphabetized by last name of author or the title (if anonymous); dates of publication are toward the end of an entry. All footnotes and all bibliographical entries end in periods. (They are read as if they were sentences: that is the principle for end period.) This format is followed consistently throughout the article Harold Pinter. When the dates accessed differ from the date posted in the editorial interpolation in the "Works cited" list (in Selected bibliography for Harold Pinter, access dates are used in the footnotes. This enables new editors, who might add new sources to this article, to add them in MLA Style Manual citation format; if a source is added via a footnote, the source would also be added to the most-relevant section of the "Works cited" in Selected bibliography for Harold Pinter, which is a split-off section of Harold Pinter. (Because the split-off sections serve as separate articles, full citations are provided in the "content notes" [footnotes/endnotes]; the sources are keyed to the same "Works cited" in Selected bibliography for Harold Pinter. I hope that this template and this explanation are helpful. It is important for relatively-inexperienced editors to recognize that these Style Manual formats are well-established fixtures in scholarship, including encyclopedia-writing; if they were not, there would not be such a template and related templates about the MLA Style Manual in Wikipedia. MLA Style format is used for articles and books about Literature (Humanities) topics such as Harold Pinter.

Main article: Style guide

[For some sources discussing serious problems relating to Wikipedia's lack of reliability on subjects in the humanities (including literature [biographies of writers and their related works] in comparison with its generally-greater reliability on subjects in the sciences, please see my current talk page, which provides links to them.] Thank you. --NYScholar 19:13, 2 October 2007 (UTC) [updated w/ some clarifications, spacing. --NYScholar 19:44, 2 October 2007 (UTC)][ditto.--NYScholar 04:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)]

I've made changes to notes citations; they are keyed to items listed in "Works cited" in Selected bibliography for Harold Pinter. Where citations are brief, I have (following MLA Style Manual format) incorporated them in in-text parenthetical citations; otherwise, they are in notes. Authors' names in sentences or the titles of works in sentences are also keyed to items listed in the "Works cited". That makes for easier reading. One can print out Selected bibliography for Harold Pinter to consult as one reads a print out of the article. I have (as stated earlier) also incorporated URLs within angle brackets in the "Works cited" following MLA Style Manual format. The active links are in those entries as well. All sources used for this article are checked and verified as of October 2-4, 2007. --NYScholar 04:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Just a note to let you know that I've updated the {{MoSElement}} template. It's now auto-collapsed, to save space; I've also added MLA parentheses as an option for the ci= parameter. Finally, I've included an oth= parameter, where additional comments about other style-related elements can be inserted. Hope this is useful! – Scartol · Talk 17:24, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Good-faith reviewers

Hi NYScholar,

I'm very sorry to have left you on pins and needles this week, but I think we may have worked out the issues and found a reasonable approach to reviewing the article up to GA standard and thence, inshallah, to FA glory. As it turns out, reviewers are allowed to edit after the review has begun, just not before. Indeed, they are encouraged to do so afterwards, presumably to make swifter progress. As an back-up check on my impartiality, however, JayHenry will check the article over before it's finally passed to GA. We may consult beforehand as well, and I expect that he will have some excellent insights and suggestions. He has pledged to review the previous discussions carefully, so that we need not "re-invent the wheel" — or change its shape. ;)

I'm very glad that you've been so patient hitherto; I assure you that this article is never far from my mind. I'll try to give you the best benefit of my own insights in trying to improve it for lay-people. :) Willow 21:43, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Willow. Much appreciated. --NYScholar 07:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Thoughts from Jay

This article has improved substantially since I first looked at it. Many, many good edits. Kudos! The subsections have improved readability. The use of sub-articles has also made the size more manageable and hence more welcoming to general readers. I spent much of this morning reading the archived discussions and I have some thoughts. They are just thoughts. Not criteria or ultimata, or anything else, but just a few scattered points I consider worth pondering.

  • The amount of space devoted to a topic generally indicates the importance of that topic. Currently, this article devotes around 1,700 words to his career from 1957-2005 and about 1,500 words to the period after 2005. I wonder if perhaps the section Since 2005 is more detailed than necessary. Perhaps, "Radio broadcast of The Homecoming (March 2007)", could be included in the article on The Homecoming for example? Are there other moves that could be made here?
The organization is intentionally chronological; it does not work to move the later productions with the earlier ones (as far as I can tell); to do so disrupts the coherence (chronology). The article focuses on the subject's current notability. There are literally thousands of articles [and parts of books] published about Pinter's earlier works; to cover that in an encyclopedia article would be impossible; the Selected bibliography provides plenty of guidance for further reading for those interested. The external links contain several articles (including other encyclopedia articles) that discuss his early career. The cross-linked "Characteristics of Pinter's Works" section/article discusses that subject pertaining to the earlier career as well; the cross link is already early in "Career"; it already links to "further information" (See) template for Harold Pinter#Works. All those Wikipedia articles on works listed in the template (at bottom and linked throughout to titles) provide plenty of material. Other Wikipedia editors can add further articles on specific works not yet covered by Wikipedia. I've provided red links for that purpose. (I can't do more than I have already done.) --NYScholar 19:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I was just pointing out that this article gives the impression that his career after 2005 is almost as important as his career before 2005. I understand the reasons for this, but I wanted to point out to you that this is the perception. --JayHenry 20:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
One has to look at more than simply space taken up [by] content; from some critical points of view (those who appreciate the earlier plays more than the later ones, his earlier career is more important; from Pinter's own point of view and from the point of view of critics and scholars who appreciate his "new direction," his work after 2005 is just as if not more important than much of the earlier work; it depends on the reader's and the sources' perspectives.) [Also: keep in mind that in Wikipedia there are more links to the better-known earlier works and thus much much more material on them than on later works, where in several cases there are no articles in Wikipedia yet at all. The amount of verbiage (words, characters) linked to via those links to plays' and films' (etc.) titles needs to be counted too; in that case, your "perception" is skewed, because you don't take into account that when a Wikipedia article to a work is linked, readers may be reading that material too (increase in word count).][added in brackets to clarify what I mean. --NYScholar 22:02, 5 October 2007 (UTC)] [tc. --NYScholar 00:40, 7 October 2007 (UTC)]

There is more already written about the earlier work and less available information about the post-2005 career; it does encyclopedia readers a service to provide the information gleaned from published sources. (It is all well sourced.) Pinter has been an extremely prolific and energetic writer/performer/director/adaptor/poet/activist; his post-2005 (post-"retirement" of playwright announcement) illustrates the "complexity" and "contradiction" referred to by Billington as cited in the lead; this is a development of available sources. Anyone can regurgitate previous general articles from other encyclopedia; that is not what Wikipedia articles are supposed to do. A "good article" in Wikipedia provides sources to be followed up by readers who want to know more; any general book listed in the "Biobibliographical Notes" list of works in nobelprize.org and haroldpinter.org (he has links to both "works by" and "works about" himself) will discuss (often [now considered] platitudes) about the earlier work. The "Biobibliographical Notes" has an extensive introduction discussing Pinter's entire canon (an overview) and this source is one listed multiple times in this Wikipedia article. All people need to do is to read the source cited for development of generalizations made and sourced in all the sections of "Career". [Pinter's website is an enormous resource of information about all his works.]--NYScholar 21:58, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

  • While too many short paragraphs can leave ideas disjointed, long paragraphs may render text intimidating and sometimes unite things that need not be united. Currently Background and education is a very long paragraph. I don't like to nitpick something like paragraph length, but in the first paragraph of body text—as a practical matter—great length will scare off some readers. A simple paragraph break or two might help welcome the reader to the article.
I have provided some additional breaks through sub-subsection headings where those appear to be useful.--NYScholar 19:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
The breaks are very helpful. Thank you! --JayHenry 20:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Glad to have done that. (But as I said, I can't do more due to time constraints.) [came back to sign.] --NYScholar 22:04, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
  • To a general reader, I think the frequent use of "'quotation'" appears to be a typographical error. Even if this is permitted in MLA, I believe it is always unnecessary and should be avoided (the case of concurrent quotations only). The use of the phrase "Qtd. in" in the citation is always sufficient and clearer. We introduce (at best) a confusing redundancy (at worse an actual error in addition to awkward typography) by saying Pinter said, using double quotation, and saying "qtd. in".
I do not understand this point at all. Please provide exact references to specific sentences in the article that you refer to. I have no idea what you are observing here. [I am not aware of any such "typographical error" relating to quotations in the article. If the MLA Style Manual] format is being followed consistently, there is no "typographical error" that I see here.] --NYScholar 19:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I am referring to sentences such as this:

Pinter exhorted the mostly-European audience "'to resist the power of the United States'", saying, "'I'd like to see Europe echo the example of Latin America in withstanding the economic and political intimidation of the United States. This is a serious responsibility for Europe and all of its citizens'" (Qtd. in Anderson and Billington, Harold Pinter 428).

You have a single quote within a double quote. The article does this throughout. I fully understand you are quoting someone else's quotation, but you can do this directly because you are also saying "(Qtd. in Anderson)". It is always awkward typography; it can be easily avoided. --JayHenry 20:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't think so; to be accurately quoted, such quotations are quotations within quotations; "Qtd. in" or "qtd. in" simply identifies the source for the quotation within the quotation; I've looked at it both ways, and this is the most accurate rendition (and correct style format). To omit the quotation marks within the quotations marks creates inaccuracies in the quotations, which in that particular case is a misxture of my (editor's) quotation and the source (Anderson's and Billington's quotations); the same is true of wherever I have supplied typography indicating quotations within quotations; those are not "typographical errors"; to omit the single quotations marks would create typographical errors. Other examples are more complex because I am quotation a source who is quoting his or her source; editorial punctuation must indicate that. Working "around" it does not help; any general reader should know the difference between a quotation and a quotation within a quotation. --NYScholar 21:00, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
See WP:PUNC on "Quotations", which discusses punctuation of quotations within quotations. (MLA Manual style of punctuating sentence fragments is more accurate than Wikipedia's; British English-style punctuation is followed only in rendering original quotations exactly as is from British sources; in this article itself (Wikipedia editors' writing) MLA style is followed for punctuation of quotations and quotations within quotations (American not British style).

If there is a possibility that punctuation could be misconstrued as "scare quotes" (which I do not particularly favor or like at all), I am very careful to punctuate properly. Wikipedia's style can lead to confusions. Sometimes Pinter does intend a phrase (fragment) as a "scare quote" (sarcasm, irony); in those cases, my punctuation indicates that. Otherwise, it is strictly the way I would punctuate any quotation within a quotation: when quoting a source exactly, most punctuation goes inside both quotation marks, except for colons and semi-colons; same is true for footnote superscripts. As I've been teaching writing in colleges and universities since the late 1960s, [and am a professional academic editor as well,] I am fairly attuned to these kinds of details. [If I think that Wikipedia manual of style is less confusing for readers, I try to follow it. --NYScholar 23:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)-

Many people (especially young students) may not be very familiar with style usage [conventions] [or why they exist] (They are still learning it and are not "masters" of it in most cases); I find that in Wikipedia, students often make changes of correct material to incorrect material because they do not know correct style usage. [Also tired because I worked on the Style guides article over the past few days to provide more accurate and less confusing guidance to those consulting them.] There are style rules in the MLA Style Manual sources/external links to check usage requirements. When there is a confusion possibly caused by Wikipedia MoS and academic style manual conventions, I follow academic conventions, which existed long before Wikipedia came along. (See my talk user boxes. I make that very clear.)

Better to be accurate than confusing and inaccurate in my view. If I have made a mistake, please point me to the style manual section (number/page ref.), and I will check it some time down the road (way down the road); the "7 day" deadline posted above in template does not work for me; this is pretty much it. My own work deadlines prevent me from doing more than I can. --NYScholar 22:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I've checked all those quotations within quotations; some I could change without creating inaccuracies and confusions; some (one set) not. [...] --NYScholar 23:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC) [I checked them all and did edit the passage that you suggest above too. (updated.) --NYScholar 23:36, 5 October 2007 (UTC)]
A "further information" cross link is already there (see above: it goes to Harold Pinter#Works, which goes to "Works of Harold Pinter" and to "Characteristics of Harold Pinter's Work" (or whatever the current title is). --NYScholar 19:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
My point is that it's one less step to link directly. But also, I said "if you so desired" if you don't desire, that's fine. --JayHenry 20:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
I have thought of that and rejected making it "easier" for readers not to read the whole article (which is what more specific links there would do. "Works" (as a list or a section) generally comes at the tail end of an article just prior to Notes, References, External links; it is a bibliography of the works written by the writer; in this case the section is (appropriately) placed at the end of the article. "Career" is historical and chronological; "Works" is a sectioned-list; it was originally all in this article; another editor took it all out and made it a separate article (discussed in archived talk pages). I left it that way and developed it on its own and cross-linked it as it developed into more than one "Works" related part of this article; there was early on a kind of "trivia" section that is now developed into a substantial article on Pinter's cultural influence(s) and allusions to Pinter in Anglo-American culture; it used to be the last part of this article (see archived talk pages; editing history); similarly, "Characteristics of Harold Pinter's works" used to be part of this article and it is now a separate article. All of these sections are cross-linked in the appropriate places. To send the reader all over the place to other articles will, however, be distracting. A reader just needs to read the article and to re-read it following the section links. Otherwise, there will be no overall understanding of the subject (just a piecemeal one). So that is the reason to leave as is (in my view). --NYScholar 21:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
[After looking at the article again,] I have added a mixture of cross-refs. there and on the other articles that I think work okay; one is a "see main" template and the other a "see" template ("Further information"). [Two "See" templates joined together in the cross-ref. in "Career"; mixture in other related articles ("Works of Harold Pinter" and "Characteristics of Harold Pinter's work".) --NYScholar 00:22, 6 October 2007 (UTC) [Updated. --NYScholar 00:36, 6 October 2007 (UTC)]
Hope these ideas are helpful. --JayHenry 18:19, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks: I've responded. The edits over the past few days have taken virtually all the time I had and I've had almost no rest. I simply cannot do any more at this time. I think the article well exceeds the "good article" criteria by now. Let's not overdo it here. A "good article" simply has to meet the criteria; it doesn't have to do more than that. If one wants to approve this article as a "good article," one can then move toward "featured article" status. This has been an exhausting process, and I really have to do my work outside Wikipedia. --NYScholar 19:50, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Please, don't feel the need to improve everything instantly. It's okay for responses to take a couple of days, though I sincerely appreciate your attentiveness to the review! Feel free to take a few days off at any point. --JayHenry 20:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
It's not a question of my taking a few days off. I have contributed all I have time to contribute (many, many hours, days upon days of time). I have to do my non-Wikipedia work. I've responded to all the reviewers' comments thus far to my best current ability. I will be doing other work outside of Wikipedia after this (and getting some much-needed rest, I hope.  :-) [Thanks again for your efforts. I think the article is "passable" at this point, given "good article" criteria. Please check with Willow about this as well, as she suggests. Thanks.] --NYScholar 20:52, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

MLA on citing indirect sources

I didn't have access to this at work, and I apologize I could not respond sooner. My copy of MLA is the 6th edition from 2003. From 6.4.7. Citing Indirect Sources:

Sometimes … only an indirect source is available—for example, someone's published account of another's spoken remarks. If what you quote or paraphrase is itself a quotation, put the abbreviation qtd. in ("quoted in") before the indirect source you cite in your parenthetical reference.

Samuel Johnson admitted that Edmund Burke was an "extraordinary man" (qtd. in Boswell 2:450).

I feel that this is unambiguous guidance on the precise situation in this article. A quote that is itself a quotation, such as a published account of another's words. I see no evidence that MLA allows your usage which would be:

Samuel Johnson admitted that Edmund Burke was an "'extraordinary man'" (qtd. in Boswell 2:450).

[NOTE: Your use of the "blockquote" feature is a bit confusing, because it makes the whole quotation look like a quotation from a source. But I understand what you mean. I don't think it's ever "wrong" to use quotation marks within quotation marks if that is what a quotation is; but as it is not necessary to do so in some cases (the ones that I've already changed); I've used the simpler format (already)--see the editing history for those changes made before you posted this comment. Thanks. --NYScholar 04:30, 6 October 2007 (UTC)]

Per my reading, the only time it is appropriate to use single quotations within double quotations, per the MLA, is when you have both quoted and unquoted material in the quotation. From section 3.7.7.

Robert Lowell, a conscientious objector (or "C.O."), recounts meeting a Jehovah's Witness in prison: "'Are you a C.O.?' I asked a fellow jailbird. /'No,' he ansered, 'I'm a J.W.'" (38-39)

In addition to not being supported by the MLA, WP:PUNC does not support this "'…'" usage. Maybe you want to quote something like:

"Harold Pinter angrily proclaimed, 'I want a second Nobel Prize!'" (JayHenry, On Pinter 23)

Then you can use quotation within quotation; otherwise, the MLA usage is:

Harold Pinter said, "I want a second Nobel Prize!" (qtd. in JayHenry, On Pinter 23)

--JayHenry 01:25, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Apparently you did not notice that I already made the changes, which follow MLA guidelines.diffs. The quotation within a quotation that occurs in the article Harold Pinter is exactly parallel to the examples given. Please re-check the article (and scroll up where I mention that I made changes). Thanks. (I do have a printed volume of both publications by the MLA as well as online access as a member of the MLA.) MLA supports using quotation marks within quotation marks that exist in a passage that one is quoting, as does WP:PUNC. I have simplified the situation (as noted) by stating "qtd. in", which is clear enough and follows both WP:PUNC and MLA. [Most of The MLA Style Manual procedure is accessible via sites linked in Style guides ext. links given. Sorry that you had to go to so much trouble.] --NYScholar 04:24, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

When part of my own sentence includes a quotation from Billington (e.g.) who quotes from Pinter in the sentence that I construct, I need to use single quotation marks within the double quotation marks to indicate clearly the distinction (who is speaking); if the single quotation marks were not used, Pinter's words would appear indistinguishable from Billington's and one could not tell who was originating the words (whose words were whose). (See editing summary ("QP"). --NYScholar 06:01, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

That section that you cited from the The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (6th ed.; most recent one) is really very vague; it does not go into the kind of detailed examples that you created. The Handbook is in some places a very sketchy version of the actual MLA style guidelines taken from The MLA Style Manual, which is the more authoritative source; double and single quotation marks have a much fuller treatment in that volume, whose punctuation of quotation guidelines have not changed since the 1985 ed. (the 6th ed. of the Handbook [2003] is based on [the 2nd ed. (1998) of the Manual] in "Mechanics of Writing" section 2.6 "Quotations" (which provides many more examples of a variety of circumstances and which need to be consulted). The guideline (rule) is "Use double quotation marks for quotations incorporated into the text, single quotation marks for quotations within those quotations" (2.6.6: 80-81): [updated. --NYScholar 00:38, 7 October 2007 (UTC)]

"Everyone can discern the cadences of 'Kubla Khan,'" the instructor argued.

In this example, one can see that MLA guidelines (rules) for the punctuation of titles differ from Wikipedia style guidelines. For titles of articles and essays etc. in quotation marks, I have followed Wikipedia style guidelines in the bibliography and notes citations, though this is contrary to MLA (see talk page archives for archived discussion). But I do not change MLA unnecessarily otherwise. In the "Mechanics of Writing" rules for punctuating quotations and titles (quotations--whether quotation marks for articles, songs, etc.; or italics for volumes), periods and commas go inside the double quotation marks and the single and double quotations marks, and fragments of phrases do as well. (That is not followed in Wikipedia MoS). In one case ("critical and moral scrutiny"), MLA would normally put the comma or period inside the end double quotation mark (or single then double); but I have currently put it outside, even though it is not a so-called "scare quote"; it is merely a quoted phrase.

Commas and periods that directly follow quotations go inside the closing quotation marks, but a parenthetical reference should intervene between the quotation and the required punctuation [if there is such a reference]. If a quotation ends with a single and a double quotation mark, the comma or period precedes both:

Everyone can discern the cadences of 'Kubla Kan,'" the instructor argued.

All other punctuation marks––such as semicolons, colons, question marks, and exclamation points––go outside quotation marks, except when they are part of the quoted material.

For examples, see The MLA Style Manual sec. 2.6.6 (81) [That's from the first ed.]. The Style Manual is the most-authoritative source of MLA style, not the Handbook. (It is far more detailed. But in terms of documentation of electronic sources, [it has not been updated as recently] as the Handbook has been [1998 v. 2003].) (For those who do not make the connection, the writing and publishing of encyclopedia is a scholarly activity; it is not generally considered the work of people who have do not have advanced degrees or considerable scholarly research experience and "peer-reviewed" academic publications. Wikipedia's style conventions do not always jive with what is considered acceptable conventions of such scholarly research writing.) --NYScholar 06:37, 6 October 2007 (UTC) [updated after developing the final paragraph of the article (passage mentioned above)]. --NYScholar 07:25, 6 October 2007 (UTC) [corr. in brackets. --NYScholar 16:13, 7 October 2007 (UTC)]

There is a longer section of the MLA Handbook on "Punctuation with Quotations" that considers additional examples in more detail than section 6's indirect source discussion; the issue is not the directness or indirectness of the source but rather the punctuation of the quotations (single, double) from any sources (both primary and secondary; direct and indirect): See section 3.7.7 (119-121, top para.), which repeats some examples from The MLA Style Manual: I don't have time to retype all that, but it is clearly in keeping with what I have already stated and quoted. E.g.:

Use double quotation marks around quotations incorporated into the text, single quotation marks around quotations within those quotations. [example omitted] ...

Except for changing internal double quotation marks to single ones when you incorporate quotations into your text, you should reproduce internal punctuation exactly as in the original. The closing punctuation, though, depends on where the quoted material apears in your sentence. ... [some of same examples as in Manual omitted] ... If a quotation ends with both single and double quotation marks, the comma or period precedes both.

"Read 'Kubla Khan,'" he told me.

[Bold added.]

Rest is all from the The MLA Style Manual section already cited and quoted from above. --NYScholar 06:53, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Recently, I created an article for the Handbook so that there are two separate articles now on these separate books with cross-links. I think I've adjusted the QP so that it is consistent with previous discussion. --NYScholar 13:02, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Review update

I've made all of the changes requested. I've also added non-breaking spaces between single quotation marks and double quotation marks in this article (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style on non-breaking spaces in relation to them [those that remain; the ones that JayHenry objected to earlier have been converted to double quotation marks wherever not confusing]) and in the accompanying Selected bibliography for Harold Pinter. If I've missed some, please add them. Thanks. -- NYScholar 06:14, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Updated further: after posting comment on User talk:WillowW#Harold Pinter and User talk:JayHenry#Harold Pinter. Thanks to both of you. --NYScholar 07:19, 9 October 2007 (UTC)] --NYScholar 07:28, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Please do not wily-nily add external links to this article. It has been through an extensive good-article review. Many changes were made following an earlier review, in which I complied with a reviewer's request for reducing external links (to those currently here). The external link added by a new user was to an article that is not from a recognizably-valuable source and that derives its content from this Wikipedia article and earlier versions of it without giving any attribution for the sources being used. Such an article is not an appropriate source for this article. There are thousands of comments posted online about Pinter's winning the Nobel Prize; many of them are derivative and not published in authoritative sources; they are not worthy of citation in this article. Referring to such an article adds no new information to this article. If new content is added, it needs to be documented (sourced) following the prevailing format full-citation format (MLA parenthetical citations in the text with content footnotes as indicated in previous discussion). The style template indicates citation format, but the choice is explained in detail above. MLA style format uses parethetical references keyed to full citations and short references in the Notes (Footnotes/Endnotes) as listed in the Works Cited that is part of the Selected bibliography for Harold Pinter.

Please read this talk page and archived talk pages to get a better understanding of the development and current status of this article. Please do not add external links to the External links section not in keeping with the format and kinds of items already listed there. It is not appropriate to add links to items that are derivative from Wikipedia and other Wikis and that do not indicate what their sources are. Those are not "well-sourced" articles. Wikipedia articles do not cite Wikis as sources and they are not useful additions to External links sections. For further information, please see Wikipedia:Reliable sources and WP:V#Sources as well as MLA Style Manual and MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers re: citation format (scroll up for discussion). Thanks. --NYScholar 08:09, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Req. for semi-protection due to recent vandalism by anon. IP add. users

Theatre of the Absurd (Theatre of the absurd)

Apparently, the Wikipedia article on "Theatre of the Absurd" has been renamed/moved from "Theatre of the absurd"; the category (see categories at foot of this article on Harold Pinter) is still called "Theatre of the absurd", leading to a current inconsistency in Wikipedia. I corrected a link. It was changed by another editor recently from "absurd" to absurd, which goes to a disambiguation page. As the word appears in a sentence that I wrote, I have linked it to the meaning of "absurd" that I intend, which is more consistent with Theatre of the Absurd: hence, "absurd" (as a compromise); in the article on Absurdism, one finds a cross-ref to Theatre of the Absurd in the "See also" section. Harold Pinter is mentioned as a playwright relevant to the "Theatre of the absurd" or "Theatre of the Absurd" in these articles (but not on the disambiguation page for "absurd"). Critical commentary on Harold Pinter's work often calls into question his placement in the category "Theatre of the Absurd" (or "Theatre of the absurd"). There is no consensus in critical literature for using the capital "A"; the term is rendered both ways. It is capitalized as the title of the book by Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd; but the term for the category is often rendered as "the theatre of the absurd" (lower case letters). Esslin included Harold Pinter in a chapter of the first edition of the book published in 1961 and in later editions devoted a whole chapter to Pinter. Esslin refers to the chapter on Pinter in his later book Pinter: A Study of His Plays, later expanded in subsequent editions and retitled Pinter: The Playwright or Pinter The Playwright (corr. rpt; London: Methuen, 1984). Wikipedia generally capitalizes only the first word: e.g., Theatre of the absurd (not Theatre of the Absurd); the term "Absurd" (with a capital letter) refers to Camus' term "the Absurd", and "Absurdism" refers to that usage of "the Absurd"; the "absurd" as used in the recent correction is within quotation marks to indicate that it is the literary term (not the general meaning only). --NYScholar (talk) 01:13, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Archive 4

Archived further "good article" review discussion and the subsequent comments [(totaling 130kb), as per Wikipedia guidelines], on May 22, 2008. --NYScholar (talk) 23:36, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5Archive 6→Archive 8
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