User talk:Dsiedler

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Hi Dsiedler! I noticed your contributions to Grey Owl and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.

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Happy editing! Tacyarg (talk) 17:06, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

FAC for Grey Owl

Hi Dsiedler! I received your email over the weekend about promoting Grey Owl to featured article status, and I see you've asked about it on Wikipedia already so I thought I'd reply here. I think it's a great idea and I'd be happy to help however I can, but I'm an accountant and just entering my busy season so I might not have a lot of free time. I wasn't familiar with the man before your question about adding a quote to Canada jay but I read up a bit afterwards, he's an interesting figure for sure and I'd think it should be fairly simple to find good information on him.

I've only been through one featured article promotion myself, on Canada jay, and around the same time I helped bring List of national parks of Canada to a featured list rating, otherwise I have a handful of good articles (see User:Ivanvector/Articles). On Canada jay I went through a good article nomination (Talk:Canada jay/GA1) and co-nominated it for featured article afterwards (Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Grey jay/archive1) - you could have a look at both of those for some sense of how the different levels of review work. I always suggest trying to improve an article to GA status first - GAs have somewhat lower standards but still go through a fairly thorough review, so you get good feedback and a sense of what could be improved further without needing to be perfect on the first go, plus newly-promoted GAs are eligible for listing at WP:DYK. However, the review process for GAs is often significantly backlogged: right now it looks like you could be waiting a bit more than a month for someone to take on the review, but you can always improve the article in the meantime. It seems like you've already done significant work on it.

You can also look at featured/good articles on similar topics for examples of what will be expected by the reviewer. For example, at the top of Talk:Grey Owl there are several WikiProject banners; one of them is Wikipedia:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America. Most WikiProjects keep a list somewhere of pages adopted by the project and their assessments; for that project here are their lists of featured and good articles. You could look through those for biographies to use as examples. Articles that were promoted more recently will better reflect the standards reviewers are using today, and anything promoted more than about ten years ago might not be very useful at all.

Happy editing! Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 18:54, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi Ivanvector! Many thanks for the great information. I'm a little surprised you haven't heard of Grey Owl. As perhaps Canada's first "pretendian", he has been mentioned in the news a few times lately in the midst of the storm about poor Buffy.

Anyway, I think I would just go directly for the FA and work without a safety net, so to speak. ;) Actually, the comments you got on the whiskey-jack article (as Grey Owl called the bird) look pretty helpful, so even a failure will make the article better.

I've been reading up on the process but haven't yet figured out exactly how to nominate an article. What is the secret? Dsiedler (talk) 22:16, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Certainly a valid approach! I'd suggest reading the introduction at WP:FAC first. The instructions for nominating are also on that page, in a collapse box directly below the introduction. I'm not a reviewer, but I've watchlisted the article and I'll try to check in on your nomination if I find more free time. Otherwise, good luck! Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:29, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I think I did everything correctly. Am I right in thinking the review itself takes place directly in the Grey Owl section of Wikipedia:Featured article candidates and the content there is mirrored in Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Grey Owl/archive1 while the review takes place. When the review is finished, one way or another, the section is removed from the first article and copied into the second? Dsiedler (talk) 16:58, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Actually it seems to be the other way around: Someone has already commented in the archive1 page and this has shown up in the FAC page without the latter getting a new revision. A little hard to follow for a newbie... Dsiedler (talk) 17:20, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

It's the other way around, like you said. The archive1 page is the actual live review page, and there is code in the FAC list which "transcludes" (basically, imports a copy of) the current revision of the archive1 page when someone loads it. Transclusions are used quite often on Wikipedia, you can read more at Help:Transclusion. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:55, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! That must have been the fastest nomination in wikipedia history: "Coord note -- This nom is underprepared for FAC, so I'll be archiving it shortly." Guess I needed that safety net after all. ;) Dsiedler (talk) 20:50, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I found the review condescending. I hadn't expected that. The second reviewer, at least, had some concrete constructive criticisms, though even he had to preface everything by pointing out how "charitable" he was. (It was like being back in High School and wearing clothes the cool kids weren't wearing anymore!)

It beats me what he finds "poetic" about the statement "There is no clear record of Belaney's life in the winter of 1911-1912." Bland, yes. Poetic?

I do agree that I overindulged in direct quotations and will replace some of these with "analysis" and "synthesis" - always working to keep my poetic leanings in check.

As for his "spit-and-polish matters", I'd rather spend my time improving the content than making sure the form satisfies every Wikipedia rule. What normal reader cares if "punctuation [is] before quotation marks where it should be after"?

Just wondering what you think about the review. But if the subject is dead and buried for you, don't worry about it. Dsiedler (talk) 15:56, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, that's disappointing. I knew you had your work cut out for you, but I was expecting the reviewers would give you some constructive feedback and an opportunity to address the issues, not just shut it down outright. Try not to take it personally - we have policies about enforcing civility and assuming good faith, but none against being blunt and direct, and sometimes those come across as rude, but they don't mean to offend.

These sorts of nitpicks are to be expected in featured article reviews. The reviewers expect featured articles to conform pretty strictly to the manual of style, which is pretty much an extensive guide to nitpicking, and a lot of these things really don't matter at all other than that the MOS says to do things a certain way. There's not really any good way to get familiar with the MOS than by making mistakes, and I get how that's frustrating. I've been editing fairly regularly for 14 years and I'm still really only kind of familiar with the most common elements. Things like "refs outside punctuation" are literally because the first person to write it down decided it should be that way and not the other way, and the MOS is full of those things.

Today is another day of meetings and running around for me, but hopefully I will have some time for a deeper dive into the article over the weekend. You can also list the article for a peer review if you'd prefer something more formal with editors with better availability. Many featured articles go through a peer review before nomination, so much so that the nomination instructions include steps to make sure the peer review is closed first. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:13, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I want to thank you for taking time out from a busy schedule to write all this. I'm only a little bruised, but I do want to point out that bluntness is not the same as condescension and charity is rarely appreciated!

Anyway, there were some constructive points and I have taken these to heart in revisions over the last few days:

• overindulgence in direct quotations: I have removed many, reduced the length and merged many inline, and moved some to notes so as not to obstruct the flow. I did indulge in a few side bar quotations (inspired by Homer Davenport, which is FA).
• "logic": For the reader that can't figure out that the article is organized by the life of the subject, I added year ranges to the section titles. It looks ugly.

I also took to heart the advice to look at other biographical FAs and wrote about my findings in the next section.

I'd be interested in any pointers you have time to give me. BTW, I have written an article about the collaboration between Grey Owl and Bill Oliver: When a Pilgrim of the Wild met a Cameraman of the Wild: The collaboration between Grey Owl and W.J. Oliver, and I'm currently working on a new article about his last two films, which I have unearthed at the Library & Archives Canada: https://www.youtube.com/@canadianfilm. Dsiedler (talk) 19:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Funnily enough, after going to all the trouble to changing range delimiting hyphens to the snd template, someone or something called "Shortdesc helper" thinks that a hyphen is required in the "short description" and has changed it - see diff. And it's made a dog's breakfast by orphaning "1938", which I've had to fix by hand. Sigh. Dsiedler (talk) 19:17, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

If you have time maybe you could take another look at the article. I've made quite a lot of changes in response to the FAC. Thanks in advance! Dsiedler (talk) 18:36, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Personal FAC of Homer Davenport

A reviewer of my Grey Owl FAC advised "I would recommend looking at some other biographical FAs to get some ideas...". So how about this one: Homer Davenport.

IMO it's a fine article - almost unreadable yet very fine. But I doubt if it would have satisfied my reviewers in its current form:

• The review states "I note on a cursory glance several uncited statements".
  • The first three paragraphs of this article completely lack references.

The lead is a summary of the article, and doesn't require cites, as everything it covers will be cited in the body.

• • On which sources are the following judgements based?
    • "Hearst moved Davenport east in 1885 to be part of what is regarded as one of the greatest newspaper staffs ever assembled..."

The article clearly states this is the view of Proctor, a Hearst biographer.

• • • "The 27 horses Davenport purchased and brought to the United States had a profound and lasting impact on Arabian horse breeding."

The "influence" point is established by a three-cite paragraph.

• The review states "the logic to the organisation of Grey Owl is also unclear (why "Posthumous recognition", then "Alcohol use", then "Grey Owl's names", then "Relationships with women"?)". So how clear is the "logic" of Homer Davenport? Why "Arabian Horse Breader", then "Personal Life and Other Interests", then "Legacy"?

That logic looks pretty clear to me - his first Career was a newspaperman, that's covered first. Then he was a horse breeder, that comes next as another aspect of his Professional life; then his Personal life; then his Legacy, after his death. That's a pretty standard way of setting out a biographical article.

• The review states "The article makes heavy use of direct quotation from non-free sources... This also has a negative effect on the prose quality and readability, by causing the article's voice to jump around and the narrative to lose focus by getting dragged into whole paragraphs of primary sources... with no real analysis or attempt to do anything with it. [A]n encyclopaedia should synthesise these sources..." The section "1907 to 1901" contains a lengthy direct quotation in a sidebar. Where is the "analysis" and "synthesis" here?

• The article makes many references to Homer's own books. Isn't this a violation of WP:NOR? By rights, shouldn't the article only draw on published sources about Homer, not Homer's own works?

No - there's no issue with using primary sources, the key is not to overuse them. Or to attempt your own analysis of them.

Dsiedler (talk) 17:12, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi, we've not met, but I saw your post on Harry Mitchell's Talkpage and meant to offer a few thoughts on FAC. I regret that I didn't. First, I appreciate you're sore at the moment, which is understandable. You put a lot of effort into the article, and it's tough to be told it's not yet ready for FAC. But I think the way to turn this into a positive is to accept the judgement (which in my view was clearly right) and see what you can learn from it. Lashing out at FAs which in your view wouldn't meet the criteria either isn't the way to go. As an aside, you've chosen an FA by an editor who has more FAs under their belt than any other. I've interposed a few comments above on that issue. More broadly, I think the key takeaways are:

• Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither are successful FACs. You're a new editor (4 months?) with some 500 edits. Just by way of illustration, it took me six years from starting to get my first FA. Being blunt, but I hope not condescending, a successful FAC at this juncture wasn't a realistic expectation. It takes time, and effort to learn the ins and outs of this place;
• The advice of other editors is almost always useful, even if you don't agree. It was suggested you try other stages before FA, such as Good Article or Peer Review. That advice would have been well-taken. Both give you the opportunity to iron out issues away from the full FAC glare;
• Tone - this is tricky. I like interesting and lively prose, but have had some very blunt criticism that the tone I use is not encyclopedic. For me, the prose in Gray Owl is too romantic to make a FAC succeed. An example, which leapt out at me, is the concluding sentence; "The story of how a lonely boy playing Indian in the woods behind his house in Hastings transformed himself, first into an accomplished backcountry woodsman and trapper in the Canadian wilderness, and then into the renowned author and lecturer Grey Owl, continued to fascinate and arouse controversy well after his death." It's just too far along the spectrum from plain dull, through appropriate, to dramatic.

Enough for now. I very much hope this experience doesn't put you off. I am quite certain from the work you've done that you can produce good articles, indeed there is much that is very good in Gray Owl. Take justifiable pride in that. All the best. KJP1 (talk) 17:10, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to write this! I will keep all your points in mind and am grateful for the encouraging words about the article.

Just an idea about tone: If an article is unreadable, it won't get read, and if it doesn't get read, why bother to write it?

I think the tone should match the subject. If the subject is in itself dull (say accountancy), an article probably can't ascend above "plain dull". But if the subject is itself interesting, as Grey Owl surely is, I think we can do better than "plain dull through appropriate" and achieve something that is entertaining to read as well as accurate and well sourced. That's my aim. Status is secondary.

All the best! Dsiedler (talk) 09:44, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

I have sent you a note about a page you started

Hello, Dsiedler. Thank you for your work on Bill Guppy. North8000, while examining this page as a part of our page curation process, had the following comments:

Nice work!

To reply, leave a comment here and begin it with {{Re|North8000}}. Please remember to sign your reply with ~~~~. (Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.)

North8000 (talk) 19:23, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Pilgrims of the Wild moved to draftspace

Thanks for your contributions to Pilgrims of the Wild. Unfortunately, I do not think it is ready for publishing at this time because it has no sources. I have converted your article to a draft which you can improve, undisturbed for a while.

Please see more information at Help:Unreviewed new page. When the article is ready for publication, please click on the "Submit your draft for review!" button at the top of the page OR move the page back. Boleyn (talk) 19:58, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

File:Grey Owl - Pilgrims of the Wild - cover.jpg

I have tagged File:Grey Owl - Pilgrims of the Wild - cover.jpg as {{no rationale}}, because it does not provide a fair use rationale. If you believe the image to be acceptable for fair use according to Wikipedia policy, please provide a rationale explaining as much, in accordance with the fair use rationale guideline, on the image description page. Some examples can be found at Wikipedia:Use rationale examples. Please also consider using {{non-free fair use}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags/Non-free. Thank you. TheGreatestLuvofAll (talk) 22:49, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Rationale has been provided. Dsiedler (talk) 16:41, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

You're welcome TheGreatestLuvofAll (talk) 17:45, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

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