Talk:All the Light We Cannot See/GA2

GA Review

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.

---

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 13:33, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I'll do this one. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:33, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Comments

This article reads well now, benefiting from the editing since its first GAN.

• I'd normally be slightly concerned to see 5 Publishers Weekly refs, but they're just for sales figures. The facts-and-figures paragraph is rather dense with similar statements about numbers of copies sold: it might be more digestible in a table or graph rather than as somewhat repetitive text, but I don't think we can really mandate that here at GAN.

• I've seen tables and graphs used in TV show articles to depict the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores of each season (e.g. Breaking Bad), but I have never seen an article (literature or otherwise) use a graph or table to depict sales figures, not even in a featured article. I'm not sure what to do to make the paragraph less dense. Lazman321 (talk) 05:17, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

• Kirkus Reviews, too, is quite a borderline source; its reviewers certainly do their best when they are instructed to look at a book, but they are often (aka usually) paid to do so by the author or publisher, so one might want to remove the mentions. Still, they are here among a mass of other publications expressing the same opinion so no great harm can be being done, even if they are to little benefit.

• The lead is of suitable length, appropriately linked, readable, and helpful.

• The Plot summary is well-structured and helpful. It's quite long but not unduly so, to my mind. I can imagine some reviewers proposing cuts to it but that seems to me a matter of taste and balance.

• The Background and writing, Style and structure, and Themes sections are appropriately detailed and reliably cited. I've made a couple of small copy-edits.

• The Publication and reception section seems to cover the main points. I doubt if the two things should really be combined, as the print details form a distinct topic from critical and scholarly reception.

• There's not much information about the publication history of All the Light We Cannot See (unless you consider sales figures to be related more to publication than reception, which I don't), and one of the few facts known about its publication history is that the success of the novel led to many reprintings to keep up with demand. That is why I combined the two topics into one section. This does seem to be allowed; Casino Royale also combines the publication and reception sections into one, and The Great Gatsby mentions the publication date in the reception section. Both articles are featured articles. Lazman321 (talk) 05:17, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

• The book has been translated into Danish, French, German, and Spanish. This should be mentioned in the Publication section; best would be to cite the first edition of the book in each of these four languages, e.g. Doerr, Anthony. Translated by Andrés Barba and Carmen M. Cáceres. La luz que non puedes ver (in Spanish). Barcelona: Suma de Letras, 2015.

• Being translated into other languages is sort of expected for commercially successful works, so unless secondary sources mention this, I won't be including this information.

• The Television adaptation section is ok; personally I'd avoid the "It was announced..." style as too much like a news site for Wikipedia; all we need to say there is that Netflix planned four episodes, etc.

• The images are appropriately licensed. The "source" section on Commons for the Saint-Malo photo seems a bit odd but the licensing there is fine. Personally I'd crop the image to more of a widescreen format, colour-correct it, and format it to be a bit wider (|upright=1.35 or similar) but those aren't GA matters.

• You might like to consider including a small image of the electromagnetic spectrum such as File:Electromagnetic-Spectrum.svg to show visible and invisible components, with a suitable caption reflecting the text mention, as it seems quite central to the book.

• I've actually considered this. The problem is that I would like the image to be just enough details and interesting visual elements to be easily understandable at a glance given the context. The image you linked to is too bland to be understandable at a glance. There's another image I know of is way more visually interesting, but it also has extraneous elements. When I have more time, I could edit out the extraneous details with Adobe Illustrator, upload it as a separate image, and add it to the article. Lazman321 (talk) 05:17, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

• The 'See also' would fit better in context at the head of the 'Publication' section.

•  Done Lazman321 (talk) 05:17, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

• Giving Doerr a navbox for 4 entries (2 novels, 1 short story collection, and one adaptation) does seem close to overkill, but that doesn't concern this GA.

Summary

This article is essentially at GA level now. I'd be pleased to see a few small changes as mentioned above before we move there formally. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:07, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I've addressed the concerns that I could. Lazman321 (talk) 05:17, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

All right. You haven't even mentioned the TV section but I think I know what you'd say.

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.