GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Catullus 16/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Cirt (talk · contribs) 00:09, 28 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I will review this article. — Cirt (talk) 00:09, 28 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Image and media review[edit]

• File:Catullus-at-Lesbia's-large.jpg

Image free-use from Wikimedia Commons, passes here.

External audio
Catullus 16 (English), read by Louis Zukofsky, PennSound

• Any chance this could be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons? Perhaps an attempt could be made to get the copyright holder to license by a free-use license? If not, no worries.

Next, on to Stability review. — Cirt (talk) 01:15, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Stability review[edit]

1. Upon inspection of article edit history, no recent conflicts, however some minor issues from prior history of what amounts to drive-by edits. Just keep an eye on this, but passes here at the moment.
2. After looking through talk page history, just seeing discussions, no major conflicts, and nothing recent at all. Passes here.

Next, on to rest of review. — Cirt (talk) 01:41, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose GA for this article[edit]

I strenuously oppose a GA rating for this article, which has major omissions in its coverage, and fails to cover several of the standard issues that are dealt with in scholarship of the poem and its poet—as indicated by the absence of T.P. Wiseman, among others, in the bibliography. It dwells almost entirely on the sexual language of the poem (I say this as the main contributor to Sexuality in ancient Rome, so believe me, this assessment doesn't come from prudery). Although I added a mention of its meter in the intro, there's no discussion whatever of its genre, metrics, or antecedents in the literary tradition. The relation of the poem to the rest of the Catullan corpus is minimal. The article is an an incoherent patching together of snippets of scholarship, and only appears to have a structure: there's a subhead "Ironic message", for instance. Why's this separate? Is irony a major theme of scholarship on the poem? If so, why is only one scholar quoted there? What's the "message"? If this article gets a GA, then truly the designation is meaningless. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:26, 2 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Cynwolfe's criticisms, and so would say the article fails 3a of the Good article criteria--the coverage of the subject isn't broad enough. That said, this is far from the worst Wikipedia article I've seen on a work of classical literature, which perhaps says more about Wikipedia in general than about this particular article. --Akhilleus (talk) 14:01, 2 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for review, I've added a T.P. Wiseman ref, though frankly not sure he brings new fresh ideas on Catullus 16 topic to the table, though I am not an expert. More suggestions for coverage improvements are welcome. I would trim Sexual terminology section even more - about half of it is unsourced, though even now it is far from being largest section or most central or significant one. "Ironic message" could be reworked - as a start I've merged it into Social and literary context. Generally not sure that as a whole the page flows and ticks. Direct quotes would look nicer if parsed into proper prose text. For due diligence, English is not my first language. Definitely some Imperial College London copy edit would we welcome most probably could do wonders. AgadaUrbanit (talk) 01:58, 3 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sexual terminology -- this sect must be trimmed as it's unacceptable to have an uncited unsourced info in a GA article. — Cirt (talk) 00:31, 5 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Done. AgadaUrbanit (talk) 22:35, 5 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See question about that audio link, above. Obviously if you can't get it, no worries, but worth a try? — Cirt (talk) 05:53, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The audio link is from PennSound Zukofsky page, dated November 11, 1961. On the one hand the recording is definitely not a public domain, on the other hand the site allows "noncommercial and educational use", but requires "written permission" and "payment of a fee" for other uses, see bottom of the page. So as far as I understand, the recording could be used on Wikipedia per "noncommercial and educational use" as far as PennSound is concerned, but according to Wikipedia policies it is a non free media and the policy directs us to limit the amount of non-free content and facilitate the judicious use of non-free content to support the development of a high-quality encyclopedia. So external media link might by a sensible approach. AgadaUrbanit (talk) 08:41, 11 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried to contact the copyright holder? It can't hurt, it's worth a try. :) — Cirt (talk) 17:17, 11 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• I was asked to revisit the article because of my reservations above. The article has improved, but it still has a couple of major coverage gaps. It never explains what hendecasyllabics are, nor how the choice of meter relates to the subject matter of the poem or to other hendecasyllabics in the Catullan corpus. It doesn't place the poem in the context of invective in Catullus's poetry in general, and it doesn't elaborate on the poem's reception by the Latin poets named in the introduction. Form, genre, and tradition/influences are fundamental elements in any discussion of a poem from classical antiquity.There's one sentence that indicates the poem deals with the proper relation of the poet's life to his work, but that important aspect isn't really discussed further (A Companion to Catullus has some material related to that). Again, the article has improved, but coverage gaps remain, it's still relying too much on stitching quotations together, and the structure reflects these weaknesses. It can be hard to research this kind of topic online and without having a standard bibliography for Catullus, and that may be an obstacle. I'm unaware of any other article on a poem from classical antiquity that has a GA, so unfortunately I can't point toward one to use as a model. But if you compare the work that went into the GA for Ode to a Nightingale, you can see that our article on Carmen 16 hasn't quite advanced from its initial preoccupation with naughty language to offer a well-rounded presentation of its major aspects as a poem. Cynwolfe (talk) 03:47, 12 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not GA at this time[edit]

Okay, I can see there are some major points to address, as noted above. I suggest a Peer Review as the next step, and recommend notifying multiple talk pages of relevant WikiProjects, prior to another try for WP:GAN. Good luck! — Cirt (talk) 03:51, 12 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]