Talk:Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr./GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: DrOrinScrivello (talk · contribs) 22:17, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: LEvalyn (talk · contribs) 02:21, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm looking forward to this review! I typically like to make the relatively small tweaks myself and just leave comments about bigger-picture items, though of course as always with editing you should feel to modify any changes I may make. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 02:21, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV ()

3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant ()

Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Comments

Prose

I feel like the sentence that begins As the 1990s began... is asking me to do a fair bit of mental work with jumping around timelines. What about backing up a little farther and going chronologically? Something like "Rockefeller died in X year, and there there Y biographies of him. Nevins published a big one, and and then in the 90s it was 50 years since somebody had tackled the subject." ~ L 🌸 (talk) 03:45, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In all other respects the lead and Background sections are top-notch -- clear, engaging, with a great balance of detail and big-picture. Well done. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 03:45, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thinking about breadth: for book articles, I always like to see some kind of themes section, or style, or other analysis of the book. In this case, I think that material is actually here in the reception section, but I want to suggest considering a different organization. To my mind, statements like "it got positive reviews", "it was a bestseller", "it was nominated for an award" are all statements about reception, whereas the discussion of Chernow's neutrality is information from the reception/reviews but about other traits of the book. I think you could consider splitting much of it out into a section called something like "Moral evaluation of Rockefeller"... and I think you could move the paragraph about Microsoft (currently in the Background section) into Reception instead. That would make it more clear where the article is providing its analysis. But since the analysis is present, I won't insist if you dislike the idea. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 03:45, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Images

The caption for this image says he is 22, but this appears to be the same image as this image which appears in his bio article with the claim that he is 18. Any idea which article/image needs correction? ~ L 🌸 (talk) 03:45, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I looked into it a little, and the one on his bio comes from this Project Gutenberg book from 1909 which says he is 18, whereas the other one comes from, um...... whatever this is. So this article should identify him as 18, and consider switching to the other image file too. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 03:50, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are so many vivid images on this subject, I feel like they should get used! What do you think about pairing this painting and this caricature or this one to capture the dichotomy of public image? It could make sense with the information from reviews assessing Chernow's neutrality. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 03:45, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Source check

I like to random-sample 10 or 10% of the footnotes, whichever is more. In this case, I'll be checking footnotes 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 17, 19 (as they're numbered in this diff).~ L 🌸 (talk) 03:45, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

2. Article says Rockefeller profited by ... convincing the major East Coast railroads to give his company sweetheart deals on the shipment of his productby convincing the major East Coast railroads to give his company sweetheart deals on the shipment of his product but I don't see which part of this source verifies that; it describes a collusion with the railroads that was planned but did not occur. But, Titan itself would also be a perfectly acceptable source here, ideally with a page number. The other uses of this source look good!

I would also cite this source for the first sentence of the reception, Titan was met with mostly positive reviews. You are in the lucky position of having a retrospective source here which actually does directly say that Titan received rave reviews, so you can attribute that big-picture assessment! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 03:45, 4 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]