Talk:World Fantasy Award/GA1

GA Review

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

Reviewer: David Eppstein (talk · contribs) 02:11, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I expect this can be converted into a good article, and although I haven't yet taken the time to read carefully for these criteria it looks at first glance pretty good from the point of view of good article criteria #1, 2, and 4. And I think the Lovecraft controversy has by now died down enough that we can slip by on #5. However at present it seems there are some major topics missing that should be covered, and whose absence unbalances the article (good article criterion #3). One symptom of this is that the lead contains information (e.g. on the design of the award statuette and the location of recent award ceremonies) that is not a summary of later article content (GA criterion 1b). See in particular Academy Awards for another article on a similar topic (the top-level article on a long-established award with winners in multiple criteria and multiple sub-articles on individual years or categories) for what other topics should be covered. These include:

• A detailed description of the physical award. A picture would be especially helpful, and (despite copyright issues) could almost certainly be justified under fair use.

• Added an image, and expanded the description slightly. --PresN 20:45, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

• How are award winners selected? There is a single paragraph on this (the third paragraph of the awards section) but no details on what the eliigibility requirements are, who are the "World Fantasy Awards Administration" that selects the judges, what the rules are for determining nominees from the balloting, how nominees are also determined by the judges, how the judges determine the winners from the nominees, nor what "the power to break ties" means. Have the rules for this part of the process changed significantly over the life of the award?

• Clarified a bit that it's the 2 that get the most nominated + 3 picked by the judges, then the judges vote, and if they have a tie the awards administration breaks the tie. Also expanded on who the awards administration is, moved the history of the categories into the "Category" section, and expanded on the general eligibility requirements. --PresN 20:45, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

• Who selects the Life Achievement and Convention Awards?

• Added (the judges, and the convention organizers). --PresN 20:45, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

• Any description of the award ceremony. What is the World Fantasy Convention, how international is it (e.g. what is the rough geographical description of its locations), how many days does it run, and how significant a part of its programming is the awards ceremony? Does the ceremony include only the World Fantasy Awards or are other awards also presented at the same ceremony? Can recent ceremonies be viewed online or are they only available to attendees? Again, a photo from a ceremony would make a nice addition to the article.

• Added some discussion of the convention itself. --PresN 16:33, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

• It wouldn't make sense to try to list all the winners here, but the current article mentions none of them – even when it calls out someone as a winner, it doesn't list what they won for. Were any of the winners particularly noteworthy? Maybe the first in their category? Books that also won other major awards outside their genre? If a reader wanted to know who the winners were in a particular year, is there somewhere to go for that, or do we only have them organized by categories?

• Added some overall statistics for the top winners. I think category-specific winner statistics belong more in the category lists, not the overall award article. We don't have "winner-by-year" articles- that would be a pretty large content fork, I think- but the Locus ref used both here and the category lists does split up the winners/nominees by year. --PresN 21:41, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

• The categories section is a bare list with no descriptive prose.

• Moved the category history into this section. --PresN 20:45, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

• Do we have any information about whether being an award winner has helped boost sales of a book, led to movie deals, etc.?

• Found a source, but it's quite the opposite- the WFAs show that fellow fantasy professionals and superfans think your work is really good, but it doesn't reflect popular tastes or have a noticeable effect on sales. --PresN 21:41, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Additionally, I am not convinced by the current organization of the article, which lumps together a lot of different topics into the catchall and uselessly-titled "awards" section and includes an outrage-magnet "controversy" section that is so large in comparison to other topics that one might think the only thing the award generates is controversy. I think the subjects grouped in "Awards" might better be split into topics similar to those of the Academy Awards article: history, nominee and winner selection, and ceremony, and the physical award. The two controversies listed might better be split off into sections on award categories and the physical award, with some brief mention in a history section. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:37, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

I'll get to these as soon as I can. I will admit, some of these are going to be hard- some awards, like the Hugo Award, catalog their changes over time and have public records; the WFAs seem to find it an imposition to even post the eligibility rules anywhere, acting instead like a club of friends that all know the rules because they've been in the club for decades. I'll see what I can do, though, all of your points are very valid. --PresN 03:22, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Done a few points, still working on the rest. There's a limit to how much of the convention I want to go into- unlike the Academy Awards, the convention is a multi-day affair with a lot going on, with awards given out during it; it's not just a venue for the awards to be handed out in. I'm also not sold on your division- there's just not enough history out there to make into a real section; this isn't the Oscars here. --PresN 20:45, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, they were suggestions, not demands. Please do let me know when you think it is ready for another round of review. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:34, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: Alright, finished up with my changes from your suggestions. I do think it's better now. I've modified the article structure, though not exactly as you proposed- there's only so much information out there on these awards, as in the end they're a genre literary award, not the largest movie awards in the world like the Oscars. --PresN 16:33, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Second reading

GA criteria

1a. Good prose: overuse of passive, and some odd word choices, could be improved, but mostly not bad.

1b. Article layout: mostly handled in previous round of revision; no additional issues here.

2a. Reference formatting: Consistently uses CS1 with YYYY-MM-DD dates. No revision needed.

2b. Reference reliability: generally good but there are some issues with misattributed quotes detailed below.

2c. No original research: mostly good, but there is at least one unsourced claim detailed below.

2d. No copyright violatioins or plagiarism: none spotted.

3a. Addresses main aspects of topic: much improved, now good.

3b. Avoids unnecessary detail: yes.

4. Neutral: yes.

5. Stable: modulo recent improvements, yes.

6a. Images are properly licensed: yes; fair use claim looks properly presented and valid to me.

6b. Images are relevant and properly captioned: yes.

Lead

The illustration in the infobox is a very good addition.

The second paragraph of the lead now summarizes the rest of the article more accurately, but reads very choppily to me.

Tried to smooth it a bit. --PresN 20:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

In the infobox, it says that it is awarded for "English-language fantasy". The same language requirement is mentioned in the first sentence, but not later, and unsourced. Is it part of the official rules, or just an unwritten consequence of who selects the awards?

I honestly thought that was in the rules, but I'm looking through them and it's never explicitly stated. I believe it's an unwritten consequence; I've dropped the "english-only" requirement listing. --PresN 20:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

History

"instated" is an obscure enough word to interrupt my reading of its sentence; "established" would be the more obvious choice.

Done. --PresN 20:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

A lot of passive voice is used here. Where did the subjects go?

Tried to punch it up. --PresN 20:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

"There were seven categories presented" is a little awkward; more idiomatic and simpler would be "seven categories were presented".

Done --PresN 20:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

"since beginning" is missing an article: "since the beginning".

Done --PresN 20:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Administration

When are the finalists typically announced?

Added (July). --PresN 20:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Categories

"subtype" do you mean subgenre?

...yes. --PresN 20:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Recognition

Waldrop did not call winning this and the other two the "triple crown"; the person who used that phrase was G.R.R. Martin, in an introduction to Waldrop's book. Similarly, the listing of people who have used the exact phrase "the prestigious World Fantasy Award" seems a little odd, and in any case is at least in part misattributed. For instance, Charles Vess did not call it "the prestigious World Fantasy Award"; instead, a biography of Vess appearing in one of Vess's books and written by his agent or the book publisher or maybe Vess himself (we don't know) uses that phrase. I didn't check all of the others carefully, but they all should be checked, and either removed (in cases like Vess's of anonymous promotional blurbs that don't shed much light on the actual prestige of the award) or properly attributed (in cases like G.R.R. Martin's where the person who wrote that phrase can be properly identified and plays a significant role in fantasy).

Condensed and properly attributed; the Datlow/Windling quote was actually Vess's blurb copy again, so I removed all three. Bio blurb's like that are often written by the person in question but not always, so there's no way to tell who said it. The Dozois was in an introduction to a story in an anthology he was the editor of, so he wrote that bit himself. I think it's better shorter anyway; I was a little anxious at the time to show notability (in the popular sense) of the award. --PresN 18:09, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

Controversy

Have comics or graphic novels ever actually won the special award?

Ha, no. Or been nominated. (though technically, people get nominated, for their work on something, but still.) Added, with ref. --PresN 20:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

"Statuette" is the wrong word, as it implies a full-figure human model rather than a head-only model.

Replaced everywhere with bust or trophy- some of the sources call it one, but you are correct that it is in error. --PresN 20:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

—David Eppstein (talk) 00:29, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Responded inline; gotten to everything except for the misattibutions. --PresN 20:24, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

One more small thing: the article writes about Lovecraft's racism (in the controversy section) as an established fact, rather than as a controversial opinion that is held only by the faction in favor of dumping his bust from the award. This appears to be a fair characterization, but should probably sourced. One possible choice (taken from the Lovecraft article) would be the quote near the top of p.6 in this book: "The least palatable aspect of Lovecraft's character was his lifelong, deeply ingrained bigotry and racism." (I'm not suggesting using this quote to expand the text of the article, only to use within a reference to source the existing statement that he was racist). —David Eppstein (talk) 22:19, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: Okay, got that last bit, and added the source you found (with the quote in the citation). That should be everything; thanks so much! --PresN 18:09, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

All my concerns have been handled, so I'm passing this review. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:40, 28 January 2016 (UTC)