Former featured articleH. P. Lovecraft is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
Good articleH. P. Lovecraft has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on March 14, 2004.
Did You KnowOn this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
December 15, 2003Featured article candidatePromoted
July 7, 2006Featured article reviewDemoted
September 24, 2006Good article nomineeNot listed
September 19, 2021Good article nomineeListed
Did You Know A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on October 5, 2021.
The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that when H. P. Lovecraft was five years old, he was told Santa Claus did not exist and responded by asking why "God is not equally a myth"?
On this day... Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on August 20, 2021, and August 20, 2022.
Current status: Former featured article, current good article

Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 06:17, 25 September 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]

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Improved to Good Article status by Susmuffin (talk). Self-nominated at 21:59, 19 September 2021 (UTC).Reply[reply]

  • Article has achieved Good Article status. No issues of copyvio or plagiarism. All sources appear reliable. Both hooks are interesting, but I prefer the first hook. QPQ has not been done. Once it has been completed, the nomination will be all set. Congratulations on this absolutely superb article! Thriley (talk) 20:58, 20 September 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • QPQ is done. All set. Again, great job on the article! Thriley (talk) 02:55, 21 September 2021 (UTC)Reply[reply]
To T:DYK/P2

Remove space between H. and P.[edit]

Probably pedantic, but I'm a bit bothered by the space between H. and P.! FlantasyFlan (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 07:55, 17 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Spaces between initials in names are an accepted convention on Wikipedia and required by the Manual of Style. I do personally agree that it looks odd, but it’s the consensus approach. Brendan Moody (talk) 10:41, 17 September 2023 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Are We Talking about Santa Claus?[edit]

The article states: "He was introduced to the Bible and the mythos of Saint Nicholas when he was two.” The "mythos of Saint Nicholas" sounds interesting, while obscurely put, and perhaps deserving of a cross-reference. But to what? Santa Claus? (My guess.) Saint Nicholas? (I’m thinking…probably not. But what do I know?)

Jdickinson (talk) 07:36, 26 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The passage seems to be a paraphrase of part of Lovecraft’s essay A Confession of Unfaith, in which he contrasts belief in God to belief in Santa. So he is indeed talking about Santa. But as a primary source, I’m not sure how due any of this is. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 11:09, 28 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Consistent with the “Be bold” editorial guideline, I added the Santa Claus link, with “mythos of Saint Nicholas” visible link text. This meant removing a more obvious link (“Santa Claus” link text) near the end of the same paragraph.
I don’t think I would have felt the need to link this if the phrasing were not so obscure. It’s also somewhat distracting or confusing, in that “mythos” is an unusual word, except when Lovecraft comes up. It would be quite possible for a Lovecraft reader not to have seen it in any other context besides the one in which it appears as many as 21 more times in this article, i.e. the Cthulhu Mythos. (Or maybe it’s more complicated; see the following.) Considering all this, it seems that the root of the problem may actually be the original language (“mythos of Saint Nicholas”) rather than simply “Santa Claus”; and if I were bold enough, I’d revise this. (And maybe I will, after this exercise in thinking out loud. Just not tonight.)
Note that the 21 other occurrences of “mythos” may or may not be capitalized, may appear as the “Cthulhu Mythos,” the “Lovecraft Mythos,” or simply “Mythos” (or “mythos”; see below). It’s not absolutely clear to me that “Lovecraft Mythos” refers to the same thing as “Cthulhu Mythos,” and someone with more knowledge of Lovecraft may want to disambiguate this.
The occurrences of “Mythos” and “mythos” as a single word are inconsistently capitalized. Do these show a subtle but meaningful distinction between a proper noun and the generic English word? Or are they accidental? This is an opportunity for a grammar surgeon.
Jdickinson (talk) 08:14, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The one instance of "Mythos" was replaced with "mythos". Similarly, "Lovecraft's Mythos" was replaced with "Cthulhu Mythos". Finally, the Santa Claus thing was resolved, and an extra source was added for good measure. ―Susmuffin Talk 21:42, 29 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
You brought the laser-like focus I could not muster! It’s a thing of beauty.
Jdickinson (talk) 09:13, 30 January 2024 (UTC)Reply[reply]
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