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Background

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Wadewitz and Simmaren had been preparing Jane Austen for FAC (work page); Wadewitz made her last edit in October 2013. They also created Reception history of Jane Austen (FA, 2008) and Styles and themes of Jane Austen.

Fountains-of-Paris (FoP), a new account as of November 2015, began editing the article on 25 February 2016. On 16 March he removed text from the lead. On 17 March, after 45 edits, he nominated it for GA; on 5 April, during the GA review, he rewrote the lead, ignoring objections (it was promoted to GA); and on 9 April, after 70 edits, he nominated it for FAC1 (archived after two days).

On 13 April FoP copy-pasted c. 2,500 words from several novels articles, and on 19 April c. 2,600 words from Reception history of Jane Austen; he moved the latter into a section called "themes", which left the article with two reception sections. After c. 130 edits, he nominated it for FAC2 in August (archived after 14 days). His edits introduced significant citation inconsistencies because the novels articles were inconsistent. In an effort to fix those, another editor added citation templates (which also changed the style), between 16 and 18 August, despite objections. [1][2] Victoria did a partial revert of the content changes on 21 August; FoP reverted her on 22 August.

Review

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Review of Jane Austen as of 22 August 2016:

  1. The writing has deteriorated since the last version by Wadewitz on 15 October 2013.
  2. The current lead is not well-written. It contains little biographical information and is highly repetitive: "most highly praised novel during her lifetime"; "brought her little fame ... during her lifetime"; "most successful novel during her lifetime"; "third published novel was ... successful during her lifetime"; "she achieved success as a published author"; "Austen's writings have inspired"; "Her novels have inspired".
  3. The previous lead, in place until 5 April 2016, flowed well and was informative. Fountains-of-Paris introduced the repetition and removed much of the biographical information on that date (diff). There is now nothing about her education, social standing or family, or why the novels are admired. The current lead is in every way less informed. Compare the second-last sentence of the October 2013 lead, which tells us by what point she had become accepted as a great writer:
    "Her work brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had become widely accepted in academia as a great writer."
    with the current equivalent (which contains less information, misses the point by switching English to British, and positions her as a famous author but no longer a great writer):
    "During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries Austen's writings have inspired a large number of critical essays and literary anthologies, establishing her as a British author of international fame."
  4. There are two sentences at the end of the "Life and career" introduction that don't belong there. The paragraph is about the scarcity of biographical information about Austen. Then suddenly, added by FoP:
    "Austen wrote during the period of British Romanticism leading to British Idealism. She admired a number of British Romantic poets, including William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Samuel Coleridge (1772–1834) and Lord Byron (1788–1824), whose influence on her novels has been studied.[7][8]
  5. The two major recent additions, the novels and themes sections, were copied by FoP from other articles and added in two diffs in April without attribution: c. 2,500 words about the novels, and c. 2,600 words that he moved into a section called "themes". The novels section comes from several articles about the novels, and the themes section was copied from Reception history of Jane Austen, one of Wadewitz's FAs. The lack of attribution aside (about which I AGF), it's poor form to present readers with the same text on several pages, particularly as FAs.
  6. The themes section is actually a reception section, but the article already has a reception section. Styles and themes of Jane Austen should be used to write a themes section (in our own words). For comparison, Literary themes and styles in Mary Shelley; Writing style in Ernest Hemingway (with themes directly below it); Style in W. B. Yeats (all FAs), and Style and themes in Henry James.
  7. When FoP copied material into Jane Austen from the novels articles, he introduced citation-style inconsistencies, because the novels articles have been edited by many editors. (The citation style in Jane Austen before that edit was internally consistent, with only minor issues that could have been fixed easily.)
    The inconsistencies were noticed on 16 August at FAC 2. [3] Another editor, Jonesey, arrived that day (he had not been involved in the article before) and began changing the citation style and adding templates. [4] The better course of action at that point would have been to remove the new text, not only because of inconsistencies in style, but because it originated from many editors and (it appears) had not been checked.
  8. Despite objections to the style changes arriving on the day the work began (see Lingzhi's edit summary: "NO NO NO NO"), [5][6] the conversions continued, which is what CITEVAR is there to prevent. Presentation issues apart, the addition of templates has caused an accessibility problem, because at least two editors on this page have difficulty reading wikitext with lots of templates.
  9. The style change included unbundling citations, so the text looks messy in read mode too, e.g.
    They married on 26 April 1764 at Walcot Church in Bath.[12][13][14][15]
    After several months at home her mother placed her with Elizabeth Littlewood, a woman living nearby who nursed and raised her for twelve to eighteen months.[31][32][33][34][B]
    Perhaps as early as 1787, Austen began to write poems, stories and plays for her and her family's amusement.[57][58][59][60]
  10. The new text has not been checked for source-text integrity, and it isn't clear that the editors of the recent additions have read the sources at all.
  11. The danger of copying words from articles with multiple editors, such as the novels articles, is that sources may have been left out, moved, misunderstood or plagiarized. The following are random spot checks from the novels section. The later copy editing by others changed some of them slightly (and made them harder to find).
    • Copied by FoP from Sense and Sensibility, where it had been plagiarized in 2011 from the cited source: "By changing the novel's title, Austen added 'philosophical depth' to what began as a sketch of two characters." This comes from from Harold Bloom's Jane Austen: "The changed title suggests that Austen perhaps added philosophical depth to what began primarily as a sketch of two characters" (Bloom 2009, 252).
    • Copied by FoP from Sense and Sensibility and not in the source (later slightly edited): "She paints Marianne as sweet, with attractive qualities: intelligence, musical talent, frankness and the capacity to love deeply. The author also acknowledges that Willoughby, with all his faults, continues to love and (to some degree) appreciate Marianne. For these reasons, some readers find Marianne's ultimate marriage to Colonel Brandon unsatisfactory" (Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life, 156–157). It isn't wrong (but is that right about Willoughby?), but it needs another source or the right page numbers. It was added to Sense and Sensibility by an IP address in 2006.
    • Copied by FoP from Mansfield Park, unsourced: "Regency critics praised the novel's wholesome morality, but many modern readers find Fanny's timidity and disapproval of the theatricals difficult to sympathise with and reject the idea (made explicit in the final chapter) that she is a better person for the relative privations of her childhood." Part of the text was added unsourced to Mansfield Park by an IP address in 2006, [7] and the rest was added unsourced (as was normal practice at the time) to the first version of the page in 2002 by Bth. [8]
    • Copied by FoP from Mansfield Park, where it is sourced to a non-RS. "Jane Austen's own mother thought Fanny "insipid",[4] and many other readers have found her priggish and unlikeable.[5] Sourced to www.pemberley.com. [9][10]
    • Copied by FoP from Northanger Abbey, from: "Northanger Abbey is fundamentally" to "read aloud by the fireside" was added in 2006 by an IP. I can't find it in the cited source. From "Austen addresses the reader directly" to the end of the section is unsourced.
  12. Several sourcing issues predate Fountains: two instances of pemberley.com (he added others) and one of iwalk.org.uk. Medical information about Brill–Zinsser disease is sourced to www.jasna.org (the Jane Austen Society of North America), and other medical information to the Daily Mail.

Needed for FAC

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To get the article to FAC, it needs:

  1. a revert to a version before the "themes" and "novels" sections were added; I would recommend restoring 16 March 2016, before the major changes began, or 10 April 2016, the first FAC version, then carrying over anything good from Wadewitz's last revision and the current one;
  2. add a "styles and themes" section, based on Styles and themes of Jane Austen (but not a copy-paste);
  3. add more about the novels, either in a dedicated section or dispersed throughout the text;
  4. add legacy section;
  5. source-text integrity check, including removing unnecessary sources from the bundles;
  6. basic prep work, including making sure citation style is consistent and checking images;
  7. 200th anniversary of her death is on 18 July 2017, so if a TFA is wanted for that date, article needs to be at FAC by April at the latest in case it has to be renominated;
  8. FAs on which to model this one: Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Sarah Trimmer, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Ernest Hemingway.
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