Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Autobiography of Malcolm X/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Laser brain 02:36, 24 January 2011 [1].

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Nominator(s): — GabeMc (talk) 22:22, 8 January 2011 (UTC), — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 23:41, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating The Autobiography of Malcolm X for featured article because after it's GAN and two peer reviews I feel it meets the FAC criteria. — GabeMc (talk) 22:22, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Earwig and Coren's tool both showed the article as a copy of http://novel.tingroom.com/html/book/show/164/, which I'm pretty sure is a scraper site, but probably good to double confirm and then add to both tools sites to exclude. Please note I'm NOT thinking this is plagarism by the editors of the wikipedia article, but better to be safe here.
Current ref 22 (Calhoun …) needs a page number, even with the url

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. I ran the article through Coren's tool and Earwig's tool and nothing showed up in regards to plagiarism with those tools. (Well, earwigs showed one known mirror, but it was a garbled obvious derivative) Ealdgyth - Talk 03:57, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - you've done some good work with this, but I don't feel it's yet at FA standards

Breitman is in References but not in Citations, as are Clarke, DeCaro. Goldman is quoted in the text but has no citation; same with Lomax
- Actually, Goldman and Lomax aren't cited in the text either. We'll move all works not cited from "References" to "Further reading"
"Dyson writes, "[Louis] Lomax says that Malcolm became a 'lukewarm integrationist'. [Peter] Goldman suggests that Malcolm was 'improvising', that he embraced and discarded ideological options as he went along. [Albert] Cleage and [Oba] T'Shaka hold that he remained a revolutionary black nationalist. And [James Hal] Cone asserts that he became an internationalist with a humanist bent."" - this seems very awkward. Is it possible to quote the original sources directly?
- The point here is to quote Dyson, who is summarizing the opinions of five scholars. Are you suggesting editing one quote into five or more quotations? May I ask, what specifically about the Dyson quote do you find awkward? — GabeMc (talk) 03:42, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - Dyson is trying to explain the many ways in which (in his view) the last year of Malcolm X's life has been misinterpreted. We may have complicated things by adding first names in brackets. All the authors to whom Dyson refers are listed in Further reading. Would it be better if we removed the first names (which aren't in the original)? — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 04:21, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
External links could stand to be trimmed
- done
Use a consistent format for both References and Further reading entries
- done
Use a consistent format for all book entries in Citations
- You want books that are cited only once to have Harvard-style footnotes? That hasn't been required in the past (see Emma Goldman or Malcolm X for examples), but we can change it if you'd like
  - No. What I meant was, leave the citations where they are, but format them consistently (for example, consistently either include or don't include retrieval dates for weblinks to print-based sources). Better yet, could you format the one-time-use-book Citation entries in a manner consistent with the References and Further readings, with the addition of page numbers for Citations? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:24, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Can you please be more specific, I don't understand what the issue is. — GabeMc (talk) 03:30, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - I think I got it Gabe, there were a few Google Books URLs that didn't have accessdates — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 04:21, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
~~Be consistent in how states are abbreviated~~
- As far as I can tell, all state abbreviations are standard. Can you point out any specific problems?
  - Never mind, I just realized that your system is different than I thought it was. Striking. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:24, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Check title for Marable 2011
- done
Clarke: if you're citing the 1991 edition, 1969 should appear in square brackets; same issue for Wolfenstein
- done
Lomax: formatting, and same date issue as Clarke
- done
Calhoun: publisher and page number(s)?
- Removed as a reference
Time is a magazine title and should be italicized, as should Newsweek
- done
Why do you include publisher locations for Citation and Further Reading entries but not for References?
- fixed
Image review: File:Alex_haley_US_coast_guard.png provides no source or proof that the photo was taken by Coast Guard personnel, and there is thus no proof of its PD status; "promotional" is not a sufficient statement of purpose of use for a FUR
- Do you recommend we remove the image? If we found a non-free image of Haley, such as this one, do you think its use in this article would satisfy NFCC #1?
  - If you can find a source for the image, then you can keep it. As for NFCC, it depends on the availability of free images (incidentally, is he still alive?). Nikkimaria (talk) 03:24, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Haley died in 1992. — GabeMc (talk) 03:48, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - How about the United States Coast Guard's official site as a source for the image. — GabeMc (talk) 03:57, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      - I think that will suffice, but I'll let others weigh in on this point. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:03, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        This page from PBS shows the image with a credit to the US Coast Guard. Don't know if that helps — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 04:21, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Link important and potentially unfamiliar terms, but don't link the same terms multiple times, particularly not in close proximity
- The linking looks fine to me, can you please be more specific, and give some examples? — GabeMc (talk) 03:48, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  - For example, not all readers will be familiar with topics like Freudian psychoanalysis and hedonism. On the other hand, there's no need to link things like the New York Times twice in as many paragraphs. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:01, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    - Thanks for the helpful and specific suggestions, I have fixed the ones you mentioned, but would appreciate more. — GabeMc (talk) 04:22, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Several instances of overly long sentences and overuse or misuse of commas, and a few other grammatical problems
- I think I fixed many (most?) of these problems since you made your initial comments, but I would appreciate if you could point out any particularly bad examples — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 04:21, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Dyson and Marable[30] agree, that it is not borne out of a critical analysis of the Autobiography, or the full relationship between Malcolm X and Alex Haley, that they describe as a collaboration" - phrasing is awkward and a bit unclear
- fixed
"Eliot Fremont-Smith, reviewing the book for The New York Times in 1965, called it "extraordinary" and a "brilliant, painful, important book". Two years later, historian John William Ward said the book "will surely become one of the classics in American autobiography"." - is it necessary to have these sentences appear twice in the article?
- fixed
I am of the opinion that this article relies too heavily on direct quotes. Though there is not a specific requirement mandating this, I suggest that the article would be better served if you were to present a few of these ideas in your own words. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:37, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm working on your other comments and suggestions and will provide updates as appropriate. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 23:41, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Disambig/External Link check - no dabs or dead external links. The Cambridge.org link isn't resolving for me, but I'm going to good-faith assume that the problem is temporary. --Pres N 18:53, 11 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.