Talk:The Beginning or the End/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Squeamish Ossifrage (talk · contribs) 04:26, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

• 1: A good article is well-written.

• The lead is insufficient as a summary of the article. I'll admit, I suck at these, too. But at a minimum, each section should be represented here in some fashion. Fixed, and I don't see any other significant problems at the GA level.

• 2: A good article is verifiable.

• Let's get the big problems out of the way first. I'm concerned about the reliability of some of these sources.

• "The Eddie Mannix Ledger" (which is styled as "The E. J. Mannix ledger" in WorldCat) is ... awkward. It's not technically a published source, for one, and it's absolutely a primary source. WorldCat says that "No definitive representations have been made about how the data should be interpreted." Is that all we can go to for the budget and box office numbers? At the very least, this needs its OCLC number (801258228). Ultimately, it'd be ideal if an alternative source could be found for this. But, at the very least, there have been several academic papers written about the Mannix ledger, so it's a well-researched, if a bit odd, primary source. We work with what there is, sometimes.
• The Sharpe source should ideally reflect that it was a journal article (from SMEC Vintage Electrics), republished online, rather than a website de novo.
• Why is Wellerstein a reliable source? Surely there's better material to cite this claim. In fact, see under criterion 3.

• Wellerstein is clearly knowledgeable about the topic, but I don't think he's quite the sort of expert that is contemplated by the "expert exception" in WP:SPS, especially when there are other sources that provide the same material without any difficulty. Consider Wilms, Wilfried (2006). "Hollywood's Celluloid Air War". In Wilms, Wilfried; Rasch, William (eds.). Bombs Away!: Representing the Air War Over Europe and Japan. Amsterdamer Beitrage zur Neueren Germanistik. Amsterdam: Rodopi. pp. 355–374. ISBN 978-90-420-1759-7., which references this exact claim on pp. 366–367.

• 3: A good article is broad in its coverage.

• Comprehensive surveys of literature aren't required for GA; that's a FA criterion. Still, it looks like there's a lot more out there than you've called on. I'm sure there are people who would be willing to quibble about the suitability of Greg Mitchell's NEWSBLOG material from The Nation (it likely would be deemed to at least have somewhat more editorial oversight than Mitchell's self-published book on the topic). But even if you didn't end up citing this piece directly, it suggests important sources whose viewpoints are lacking: a positive review in Variety, and a rebuttal of its claims of accuracy in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (certainly a far better source than the suspect Wellerstein blog). But see my closing notes.

• 4: A good article is neutral.

• No objections here.

• 5: A good article is stable.

• There's a talk-page complaint about reference formatting changes, but I don't see that much came of it. No obvious concerns here. Doesn't seem to have mattered.

• 6: A good article is illustrated, if possible.

• Images are appropriate and properly licensed. It's possible that the poster wasn't renewed and so would be eligible for {{PD-US-not-renewed}}, but if you don't want to do the legwork to check for a renewal notice (which is sometimes far more trouble than it's worth), there's nothing wrong with the fair use claim given.

Prose analysis (for criteria 1 and 4) pending, probably tomorrow. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 05:29, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for this review. It is much appreciated.

1. The figures from The E. J. Mannix ledger were added before I began work on the article. I have added the OCLC. I don't know anything about how you obtain budget and box office numbers for classic films. However primary sources are acceptable for facts.
2. I don't know how you do the legwork to check for a renewal notice either. If I did, I have a publicity still with the cast gazing off into space.
3. I've added the Variety review comments to the article.
4. Alex Wellerstein is an assistant professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He wrote his doctorate on the Manhattan Project. He is absolutely an expert on the subject and the article cited summarises the latest scholarship.

Again, thanks for taking this on. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:38, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Promotion

I'm happy to pass this as a Good Article. I still believe that the Wellerstein source is not optimal, and I've offered an equivalent replacement source above, if you're interested, but I'm not going to hold this back from promotion over a disagreement about whether the WP:SPS expert exception applies in this case.

If you are interested in developing this further, there's a lot more material out there that you can draw upon. A quick perusal of the other sources suggests that your survey of the literature is "broad", as the GA level demands, but far from FA's "comprehensive" criterion (although I do think this article could easily become FA-level). Getting a hold of the Journal of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article would be quite valuable, I think. And there are quite a few print sources that discuss the film, sometimes at length. One, I linked above as an alternative to Wellerstein's blog. Other books that appear to have particularly germane content include:

• Shapiro, Jerome F. (2002). Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-93660-6. (has considerable discussion of the cultural themes represented)
• Perrine, Toni A. (1997). Film and the Nuclear Age: Representing Cultural Anxiety. Studies in American Popular History and Culture. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-8153-2932-9. (more on cultural themes, only major source I found to discuss the Matt Cochran subplot and its implications)
• Scheibach, Michael (2003). Atomic Narratives and American Youth: Coming of Age With the Atom, 1945–1955. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-1566-3. (only minimal coverage, but p. 57 identifies two educational films that were themselves based on this documentary: Beginning or the End [without "The", 1947] and First Atomic Pile [1947])

As an unrelated suggestion for improvement, you might considered end-noting inflation-based equivalents for financial figures (the {{Inflation}} template is an awesome tool that I only recently became aware of. But none of this stuff is required for the GA standard, and I feel the work done on the article since I started the review satisfies that standard. So I'm happy to award it the little green icon. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 16:45, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I have added the inflation templates. They are awesome, but I'm restricted in using it in the military and scientific articles I normally work on. I do have the Journal of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article. I have added it to the article. Wellerstein's article is used to cover the debate about the leaflets. What happened was that this became a major issue in 2012 with the online publication of various leaflets. This resulted in a flurry of research. There was debate on Wikipedia, resulting in a careful wording. The idea is to give the reader access to the most up-to-date information. I will consult books you recommended. Again, thanks for the review. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:02, 12 February 2015 (UTC)