Talk:Kathryn Forbes

Biography assessment rating comment

WikiProject Biography Summer 2007 Assessment Drive

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 22:37, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

"Factual" information in last draft is a joke

Whoever contributed to the last couple of versions clearly did not research Kathryn Forbes' life, and assumed that "Mama's Bank Account" was an autobiography. It is not.

Please, don't write for Wikipedia unless you are willing to research carefully and use factual sources, not speculation. That means using biographies and historical research, not popular fluff. Hopefully no one is silly enough to use this to research their school papers without getting backup sources. Sorry to be so harsh, but writing a reference work should be serious business, and the number of errors/omissions in this article are truly staggering.

• Forbes was born in 1909, not 1908.
• Forbes was not the child of immigrants. Her mother was the daughter of a Norwegian immigrant. Both her parents were born in the United States.
• Forbes' parents divorced when she was a teenager; they were little like the family in "I Remember Mama".
• There's nothing here about Forbes' career as a radio scriptwriter or magazine writer, nor about her marriage, subsequent divorce, and the raising of two children.
• "Mama's Bank Account" was set in the 1920s; the play adapted it to the turn of the century, which would have correlated with Forbes' birth year.
• She did not write "Bell Book and Candle". That was written as a stage play by John van Druten, who only adapted Forbes' play.

Sources include Judith E. Smith's "Visions of Belonging," Robin Morgan's "Saturday's Child", and biographical articles in Contemporary Authors and Current Biography. Your local library, you should visit it sometime. 98.194.237.126 (talk) 23:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

But the sources in the article don't support it

I'm all for having accurate facts in an encyclopedia article, but it's also important that the sources cited actually support the facts set out. The sources (and really, how accurate is IMDB?) don't even touch on most of the factual statements laid out. If "Contemporary Authors" actually supports these assertions, cite it (right down to page) in the article, not just (a passing reference in) the discussion of it. Everybody: please, don't write for Wikipedia unless you're going to include good cites to reliable sources. See Wikipedia:Citing sources. --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 18:16, 27 April 2010 (UTC)