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GA Review

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Passed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:15, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Nominator: Piotrus (talk · contribs) 15:36, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 10:48, 17 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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  • The work has not been translated into English, so will not be well-known to readers of English Wikipedia. It would be helpful to add
  • a short 'Context' section at the top, with a brief subsection on Polish young adult and science fiction literature (say from 1900 to 1960)
  • On context, despite your reluctance to cover the author (next item), there seems to me to be a clear need, so as to meet the GAN criteria, for a brief paragraph explaining the background to the book in terms of the state of Polish literature and culture at the time. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:57, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Chiswick Chap I've added a short para about the writer to the history, introducing him. I am really unsure what else could be added for context here. The sources I read did not discuss "the state of Polish literature and culture at the time" outside commenting on the fact that this book was novel for its time and place, as discussed elsewhere in the text. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:16, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • ... and a similarly brief subsection on Jerzy Broszkiewicz.
  • The goal is to give readers a clear idea of where this book sits in those two contexts.
    •  Not done Jerzy Broszkiewicz (another GAN of mine) and Polish speculative fiction have articles that are linked from the body. I don't think we need to summarize either in the text; I have never seen an article that would do so outside the cases where the author is not notable and his bio exists only in the article about his work. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:24, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • Well, J. R. R. Tolkien is probably as well-known as Broszkiewicz, and there is a context section The Lord of the Rings§Background for his best-known novel... so, yes, EN-wiki does expect context. As for pointing to embedded links, if that were sufficient there would be no glosses and no "summary-style" sections with "main" links anywhere on Wikipedia. Some context is clearly needed here; you needn't divide it into subsections, but a brief word introducing the author and describing the background is required. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:42, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Chiswick Chap: Comparing Tolkien and Broszkiewicz is a bit like comparing a mountain with a small hill (molehill...). I mean (as you know well, but I just realized), Tolkien has his own subsection under GA/Literature (nicely done, I assume most of these are yours...). Note that the 'background' in TLR talks is a subsecton to 'Concept and creatoon', and talks about Tolkien's legendarium and some related articles. There is nothing we like this for Broszkiewicz except his bio, and I do not see JRRT's bio summarized in LoTR. I do not see background, context or in particular, summary of author's biographies in the entries under GA/Novels I checked (Artemis Fowl (novel), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, To the Stars (novel). I am really not sure what context you'd like to see here (there is 'publication history' already), but I will repeat - summarizing an author's bio in articles about the author's novels seem very rare. Again, even the LoTR article you linked does not contain any summary of JRRT' bio. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:04, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        On the author: all right, since you're reluctant. This is less important than giving the article the needed structure. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:34, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        • Mind you, I definitely think the article will be weaker without some author context too. Actually, your arguing that B is less well-known than T, so readers have less need to know anything about B... is a bit upside-down: since T is not well-known to an English-speaking audience, some context is rather more necessary. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:57, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • The 'Plot' is cited, in the last paragraph to 5 sources which seems excessive, especially as plot summaries of books do not require citation beyond the implicit citation of the book itself. The refs should be moved out as they are only supporting the plot with no commentary here.
    •  Not done Perhaps en wiki has more lax rules than the pl wiki, which requires sourcing for the plot. Instead of rereading the book (which I read as a teenager), I based the plot summary on all the plot mentions in relevant sources cited. We could certainly just kill all the citation in the plot section and/or replace it with a general reference to the book (without page numbers...) but I think this would be a pointless make work. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:24, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • EN-wiki doesn't expect citations for plot, but it's not a problem if you're rather leave'em there.
  • The reason for separate 'Reception' and 'Reviews and analysis' is not very clear. The first paragraph, on compulsory reading, isn't exactly 'Reception', while the second paragraph seems to be 'analysis'. This needs reorganising.
    •  Done True, I have a habit of splitting reviews from academic analysis but maybe this is not a great idea. Likewise, one could argue that my chronological treatment is not ideal, but that's how I write. I concur that the split here was confusing. I have renamed the section to 'Awards and recognition' and kept awards and government inclusion in compulsory list info here, and moved the (scholarly) comments to the analysis section. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:24, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • Many thanks.
  • The 'Reviews and analysis' section is a very long, fragmentary, chronological procession, with some very short paragraphs (five are single sentences), each one giving one person's view of the novel. The MOS says that such sections should be reorganised by theme, possibly into subsections by those themes: I suggest that's what we should do here.
  • At a glance, recurring themes include:
  • modern fairy tale / modern Polish literature / city (urban) fairy tale
  • use in school / compulsory or recommended reading
  • combination of science fiction with ethical/moral values
  • You might wish to create subsections for each of these three themes (or others of your choosing); to sort the materials into those subsections; and to merge similar statements to reduce repetition. See also the 'pre-1989' comment below.
  • I think it's a good start but we're not quite there yet. In detail:
The 'Reviews' bit is as light as the 'positive' comments it contains, but it is even and consistent in tone, and forms a coherent section. We could maybe close up the text into just one or two paragraphs.
The 'Main themes' section is a list of 15 weakly-related paragraphs, arranged chronologically, with four of them as single sentences (deprecated). It comes across as a bit of a rag-bag, contradicting the title's claim that big themes will emerge. Stronger thematic grouping into fewer paragraphs, each with a clear, er, theme would be an improvement.
'Milestone in Polish youth fiction' is a clearer section with a strong theme. It also contains 4 single-sentence paragraphs and an emphasis on chronology, so again a bit more grouping by theme would be good.
'Other observations' is inevitably a pot-pourri of miscellaneous comments. I do wonder whether, given the emphasis on youth and education in several comments (across all the sections), we couldn't draw out the children's interest/lessons/role models for children theme into a clearer paragraph or named section.
  • Maybe, therefore, it will be worth giving the materials in the section a good shake and seeing how far they can be grouped a bit more strongly. In business, the usual way to do this is to write the names of candidate themes from the items on bits of paper and arrange these on a wall (or the floor), then to cluster similar items to pull out major themes and sub-themes in groups of groups, if you take my meaning. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:12, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Chiswick Chap I've merged short paragraphs to condense review section into three paras. I've also merged some shorter paras elsewhere. I've tried to rearrange the other stuff, as I agree with you this is likely superior to chronological summary of reviews and analysis, but I am a bit wary of OR in the section headings. Let me know what you think Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:57, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Certainly an improvement; section headings are never cited, so they aren't OR as long as they correspond to what their sections contain. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:14, 2 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suggest that 'Adaptations' (for theatre, radio, film, and TV) be a separate chapter. The chapter should say a little about each adaptation, e.g. was the plot changed or cut, did it innovate, how was it received, did any of them travel outside Poland.
    •  Not done I did split the adaptations into their own section, but during my pretty comprehensive review of sources I did not find anything on adaptations outside the film one. What I found about the film can be seen in pl:Wielka, większa i największa (film) - it got what I'd describe as mixed reviews, but a brief mention in a modern scholarly work claims it got negative reviews (that mention is passing and IIRC it did not cite its sources...). Not sure what else we could say here about the movie that would be due (I've added an interlanguage link for the mention for now). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:45, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • The 'Translations' section is a dry bulleted list, with four of the entries not even having dates. It might be better just to write a brief text (without a list) to say that the book had been translated into at least 10 languages by 1987, and then to give highlights. For example, it was translated twice into Russian and into Serbo-Croat (we call it that, not -Croatian, I believe): does this reflect popularity in those countries, unsatisfactoriness with the first translations, or what?
    •  Not done I am not sure how to reply here. The sources I found contain no information on translation besides what I have given. Since there is no analysis or context, we cannot discuss the significance of the translations, even through it certainly means something, and the number of said translations, in my experience, is certainly above average and suggests "something". What, exactly, would be ORish to say - I can think of some hypotheses, but well, that's pure OR. As for missing titles and dates, again, that's what I have in Polish sources I worked with. I don't know how to find out the missing dates/titles. I just spend half an hour verifying what I could with worldcat, but I could not find information on the translations marked here with just a language. Maybe User:Daranios could see if they could find the German edition (title, date) for this? I don't know who might help with Bulgarian, Romanian or Hungarian. Perhaps User:Biruitorul could check in Romanian? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:34, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • My search on a German translation for the book came up empty. We did discuss this in the past. Piotrus, you wouldn't remember where? The catalogue of the German National Library does not have an entry for such a translation. I don't have a lot of experience there, but I would assume that this is pretty comprehensive. Then again, I am not sure if everything published in GDR is included. But interestingly what I did find is that the Polish film was translated into German under the title of "Das zauberhafte Auto" according to this and other sources. Daranios (talk) 11:22, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        @Daranios We talked about another book or books of this author, I think, which have been translated to German (Mein Pech mit der Mondreise, 1978 and Die rot-weisse Sonne, 1973). I wonder if Frycie made the error and combined film releases with book. Very hard to find much about the film releases in other languages; there is some booklet in German? [1]. I can find the title translated to Chinese and English too... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 13:29, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed a booklet of 4 pages on the film. IMDb also confirms the German translation of the film and co-credits Jerzy Broszkiewicz for the screenplay, so such a mix-up is very much conceivable. As a slightly more serious source, a 1965 issue of the magazine Eulenspiegel seems to have reviewed the German version of the film. Google Books only provides a snippet which translates to "Das zauberhafte Auto: Here, the passion for cars that is probably widespread among all children was given priority without hesitation. A scrapyard-ready vehicle veteran takes on a mysterious life of its own, befriends..." As for the novel, according to the Wikipedia article the German national library includes GDR publications. So while I by no means want to claim any authority here, given that a negative proof is very hard to do I'd err on the side of caution and remove the claim of a German translation, or move it to a footnote explaining that one secondary source says it exists while the German National Library has no record of it. Daranios (talk) 16:18, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I concur we should have a footnote per above, common sense, since I do think it is an error in the Polish source, but I am a bit wary of how to handle this given WP:OR. Ping TompaDompa for ideas how to handle this minor detail - saying that the reliable source might be wrong, and citing this to... what? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:04, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]


  • PS. There is also a chance this is just an error in (the reliable) source I cite. The claim that this was translated to Bulgarian, German, Romanian and Hungarian comes from Frycie (1983) and is not mentioned among other translations (with titles and dates) in Czachowska (2003), nor in Worldcat (which generally verifies Czachowska's claims). But Frycie's work is reliable, and if he makes a claim like this, it is not for us to say he is wrong even if we cannot find proof that such translations exist, I am afraid... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:36, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    PPS. I double-checked Frycie (1983) and yes, he makes this claim, so it is not my error. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:42, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    At a first look, the only book by this author translated into Romanian is his Chopin biography. Perhaps others exist, but for example there is nothing else in the catalog of the National Library or the Bucharest University library. Biruitorul Talk 06:57, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • All the dates given for translations are pre-1989: does this imply that the book is actually or popularly thought to be closely tied to the Communist era (e.g. by its opposition to the regime then)? Perhaps this would go with the reworking of 'Reviews and analysis', i.e. is there an equation of "modern" with "of that period"? The 1992 remarks by Halina Skrobiszewska might support this theme.

Images

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  • None.
  • If there are PD or CC-by-SA images of any of the adaptations available on the web, those could be included in the 'Adaptations' section. Alternatively, if there are none, and there was a production that attracted critical attention for some reason, the text could discuss that production and the source(s) used to write an NFUR for a non-free image.

Sources

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  • Many of the sources are offline (and in Polish) so I'll assume good faith on those; their titles certainly suggest they are relevant and appropriate.
  • I note the minor COI of [30] Konieczny; the source would work well for the suggested context on Broszkiewicz.
    • Right, I published an article on him in SFE based on my research for this book :) I noted nobody made the simple but (to me obvious) connection to the concepts of cold war and nukes, so I mentioned it there (partially so that we could say so hear clearly :P). Yay for getting OR on Wikipedia (but it's not OR anymore, right? :). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:33, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It's fine and outside Wikipedia's definition of OR as it's properly published. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:24, 18 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Spot-checks ...
[1]: I failed to find "1960", "Broszkiewicz", or "największa" in the source? Perhaps the search is defeated by inflections?
[4] appears to be a dead link. This is a non-fatal error for a book source.
[16] seems to verify the claim made.
[19] (in French) seems to verify the claim made from the snippets visible.

Summary

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Drive-by comments

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  • What makes the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction a reliable source? Any user-generated site can call itself an encyclopedia.
  • I find search results (in this case, from WorldCat) distasteful. Perhaps there’s no policy against it, and I know replacement sources can be difficult to find, but hm.
  • This is really problematic: surely there is a policy against directing readers to sale pages of commercial vendors? — Biruitorul Talk 07:04, 19 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Biruitorul I am not sure what's wrong with WorldCat, outside of it being a bit close to WP:OR; it is used to report/confirm some dates and titles for translations. I am not sure how to do it better (link ISBNs? not all books have them...). I did confirm that all the facts from the online blurb are in the other sources cited and remove it, but this does mean that verifiability for this (claim about author's daughter and his nickname) is now much harder - with the book blurb removed you now have to check the obscure article in undigitized Polish magazine from 1960s to confirm this fact... Sadly, I wasn't able to confirm that this blurb is printed in the new book/ebook (which might be more acceptable to cite, if PRIMARY-ish). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:15, 30 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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