Talk:Frank Waters

Foundation

I think the Frank Waters Foundation section should be a separate article. It is a unique entity in itself.--Steven.Harris ^{(T | C)} 18:30, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and did made the FWF section a separate article. Someone had set up a redirect to force foundation references back to the main page, which suggests to me some agendas in the previous edits. I also created a stub to replace the paragraphs on River Lady. Wikipedia actually already had an article on the movie!

Contrary to the comment below, the Frank Waters page is rather bizarre. It was full of dating errors and asserted that Frank went to "Columbia College" in Colorado Springs. He went to Colorado College and, according to the FWF web site, Columbia Elementary (also in Colorado Springs). The long entry on an obscure collaboration with Houston Branch was not balanced with so much as a synopsis of Frank's primary works: People of the Valley, The Man Who Killed the Deer, Masked Gods, The Book of the Hopi, and The Woman at Otowi Crossing. I'm going to continue working on the page (and sub-pages) in the coming weeks. MMcA (talk) 23:01, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there are no third-party references which establish the notability of the FWF. Therefore, it has to be kept in this article or it is likely to be deleted. An organization's Wikipedia page cannot be based solely on it's own website. I checked Google books, news & scholar, but there simply weren't sufficient sources for the Foundation. Yworo (talk) 02:31, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

The above sounds like an "official" decision, and I'd like to know if it is, because my sense of things is that the section on the foundation DOES NOT belong in the Frank Waters page, any more than a section on the Jeffers Foundation or the National Steinbeck Center belongs in the biographical piece on the respective author. I'll see what I can do about "validating" the Foundation with references, because I think the section diverts attention from Frank himself. MMcA (talk) 22:52, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The official policy is WP:NOTABILITY. Notability requires coverage (not just a mention) in several independent third-party reliable sources. I searched for them and I could not find any. Articles supported only by their own websites are regularly deleted. I was trying to save the material. And yes, notability is an *official requirement* for an article. If you have such sources, then by all means provide them and it can be a separate article. Yworo (talk) 23:42, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Misc comments

This page for Frank Waters is very extensive and well-written. All facts, descriptions, and stories are completely unbiased and the flow of information works well. There is also a lot of information from Waters' childhood and background which is/was very important to his career as a writer. Mpeebles (talk) 03:13, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

The formatting is also acceptable but could use some work to make all sections of the page uniform. In the biography section, a double space in between all paragraphs would probably look more professional. Also, a lot of the information in the biography section, though seemingly verifiable, could be even more so if citations were used as a way to reference statements and facts.

Has Waters ever won or been nominated for any prizes/awards for his works? I like the plot summary next to each book title, but facts about the list of books could also be interesting. Any pictures of Frank Waters that could be put onto the page, or perhaps a picture of one of his more popular book covers?

Overall, very well done. Mpeebles (talk) 03:21, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Your article is off to a great start. You have very detailed information, in terms of listing works that Waters has produced, along with brief descriptions of the works you listed. Your provision of the Frank Waters foundation web site and other categories that Frank Waters may fall under, such as "people from Colorado Springs, Colorado," are helpful to the reader in case he or she wants further information on the topic or wants to find related topics.

You’ve already started with brief descriptions about his other works, so just continue on your list. The only thing I might consider is cutting the list a little shorter if you are going to continue with the brief descriptions. It might be better to make the 'other works' section a list of links that could lead the reader to further information. This is merely to make that section not appear as cluttered. In the biography section, it might be relevant to include some events that happened towards the end of his life to help wrap up that section.

Your references are credible, however, scholarly articles about his work would give you more information on some of his works or information that could be put into the biography section. The UNC library database has plenty of scholarly articles that you could skim through and choose which ones are most helpful. While your references are credible and focused on your subject, be aware of bias such as on the Frank Waters foundation web site. The site is extremely focused on him, but just make sure it isn’t only showcasing the positive aspects of Waters' life.

Other than that, great start! Good luck with the rest of the article.

Dfheathe (talk) 17:57, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Great work on the article! The information seems to be accurate, and unbiased. Good work on including some solid sources.

• I am not sure if quotes are necessary for the second line of the article “grandfather of southwestern literature”. If they are necessary, then you should include a citation after the quote.

• Also under the Novels section it would be helpful if you differentiated the titles of the novels from the rest of the paragraph from something other than italics. If you were to make the titles Bold or Underlined I think it would be easier for them to catch the eyes of the reader.

• Are you going to include information about the “River Lady” and the Frank Waters Foundation? I think that if you are going to keep them there then there should be some more specifics included there.

• In the first line under biography you have “father’s” when I think you meant to just write “father”

• In terms of the sources maybe you should include the citations in different parts of the article for the different sources. That way the reader can figure out where you got specific parts of information included in the article. (Sjperry (talk) 14:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC))

Good start to your article. I think it goes without saying that your section on his early history/ biography is highly detailed and needs little more additions. It strongly resembles the biographies I have seen on other people's wikipages and if comparison can be used to judge the quality of your page you are on the right track.

One complaint I do have is in the section where you listed Frank's works. It seems to just blend together from one title to the next which makes it hard to really process this information as a reader. To fix this problem try formatting the information in a different way. Could you perhaps separate the information into a table or something like that?

Also could you add a picture. I know on a lot of biography wikipedia pages pictures are added for the person being discussed along with a view brief facts. Personally I think this makes a page look more professional, but in the end it is up to you.

Your sources seem fine, however I have noticed that wikipedia wants you to add more of them. Biographies are tough today, especially if the person isn't well known. Try and look at alternative web crawlers to google if you are getting stuck.

One section you should definitely add more information on is the Frank Water's foundation section. I am sure the website will provide any information you need and you shouldn't have to worry aout credibility for information form the site. Good start Tripp Deichman (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:45, 8 April 2009 (UTC).

Article issues

The article could be improved if it were not to rely so much on info drawn from a single source, namely the Frank Waters Foundation. The foundation is not what one would consider an independent or disinterested source, which is not to say the info it provides is necessarily wrong or biased, but it does provoke some WP:COI and WP:RS concerns.

Also, the article cld be better balanced in coverage if it included some more critical assessments (and there are a few out there) of his work, particularly his New Age (neo-)Indianism contributions and other speculative esoteric stuff.--cjllw ʘ TALK 05:18, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Bibliography

The Bibliography organized Frank's titles by print date rather than original publication date. I think the actually chronology is important, so I reordered the titles. MMcA (talk) 21:02, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Critical Academic Reception of Waters's Scholarship

I am somewhat disturbed that this article does not deal with the critical reception of Waters's scholarly writings, most famously with his Book of the Hopi. In an Essay Review (Geertz, Armin W. (1983). "Book of the Hopi: The Hopi's Book?". Anthropos. 78 (3/4): 547–556. JSTOR 40460648. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)) written by an academic student of Hopi religion as a critical response to the German translation of Book of the Hopi, Armin Geertz raised several questions:

"If it is what it purports to be, namely, the Hopi's Book ("a Hopi Bible," xxii,... Waters 1963), why then do the Hopi one meets denounce it? Why have groups of angry Hopi requested meetings with the authors on at least three occasions since the publication of the book? Why do the specialists avoid even mentioning the book?"

In the course of his reply, Geertz criticized Waters and his co-author, White Bear Frederics, Waters's use of sources, and the resulting book itself. He concluded that:

"Waters is a good, however untrained, scholar himself, clothed in the elegant cloak of a poet. If the field of Hopi literature were not littered by hundreds of other less talented poets, one could suffice to ignore the whole problem. But while Waters confuses ethnocentrism with scientific studies, he is at the same time misusing the very methods of the disciplines he ridicules. While hiding behind such accusations as, the scientist "will certainly deny that invisible spirits manifest themselves as described," he is avoiding his own responsibility as an accurate chronicler.... In a field of literature hopelessly littered by a tremendous amount of romantic rubbish and unimpeded amateurism, I do not think it pompous, sacrilegious, or pedantic to ask that we are allowed to hear the Hopi in a completely unadulterated form and in their own language."

Perhaps something of this critical academic reception of Waters's work should be included in this article. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 20:57, 27 June 2013 (UTC)