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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Characters of Carnivàle

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 16:33, 24 May 2008.

Characters of Carnivàle

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Self-nom I believe the article meets all FA criteria, except possibly one inactionable one: Some sources are to a yahoo group that requires registration, but these are forum posts by the producer of the show (Daniel Knauf) and are thus reliable in their essence. As far as I could determine in the last 6 months, the information that he gave there is unavailable anywhere else except for fan forums that copy-pasted his messages, so I ref'ed his original messages. – sgeureka t•c 14:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments (forgive my typing, I'm on the road with an unfamiliar laptop keyboard)

  • What makes the following reliable sources?
  • You already mentioned the problems with the mailing group posts. I'm assuming you mean current ref 3 "Pitch Document and Character biographies?" Also the Current ref 23 "Re: Stray thoughts on HBO's meddling"? And current ref 39 "Chat with Daniel Knauf"? And current ref 63 "Re: Prophet, Prince Usher"? And current ref 96 "Re: S2 Finale"? And current ref 97 "Re: in response to dan's letter"? and current ref 99 "Re: even more Carnivale questions"? That's a pretty large chunk of referencing sourced to a newsgroup.
    • I know that that's a lot, but there's the choice to leave the reader (the viewer) in the dark or not. Imagine Lost got cancelled after the second season, but the producers only chose to reveal their story intentions some time later in fan circles in a documentable fashion when the mainstream sources have already moved on to the next shows. "Pitch Document and Character biographies" is a ~40-page Microsoft Word document in two parts that Knauf had given to Beth Blighton years after the cancellation, and which explains all the hidden layers of the characters' past that the show never really got to reveal. Beth Blighton chose to host the document(s) in the Yahoo Group after Knauf gave his okay. – sgeureka t•c 13:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • You use hbo.com along with HBO as the publisher on a lot of refs. Pick one for consistency? Personally, I prefer HBO. Same sort of deal with ew.com, variety.com, usatoday.com, nytimes.com, etc.
    • The show aired on HBO, so it's HBO. The interviews etc. were (only) published online, so it's hbo.com. Some things were only said on DVDs, so it's HBO Home Video. Some online editions of newspapers can be very different from their print counterpart, so where I know the articles to have been published in regular newspapers (but were sometimes published by others later online), I used the normal name; where I only found online articles and am unsure about print publication, I used the ".com" version. (I.e. there is consistency.) Should I still change hbo.com to HBO etc. anyway? (No problem.) – sgeureka t•c 16:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I like the original way of sourcing these better. Just as book publishers have different divisions that publish different things a modern media company like HBO has several different, large, divisions and it makes sense to distinguish between them where possible. Ditto for distinguishing between articles found online and in printed versions of news providers. In short I think removing detail in the sourcing of the article is a bad thing.--Opark 77 (talk) 09:16, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Current ref 87 "Fleck romances Carnivale" is lacking a publisher.
I'm on the road again, and the link checker tool doesn't like this hotel's ISP, I am getting a LOT of timeout errors, which I suspect are related to the hotel ISP. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:30, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Responses on questions about reliable sources need to reference WP:V policy. Answers like "they organized so-and-so" or "I think they're reliable" don't resolve the query. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:56, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

True. I've added some more details above. Please let me know if and what sources still don't pass the reliability hurdle, since I believe all do. – sgeureka t•c 16:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
We're back into the territory covered by some of the most obscure recent FAC topics here. In general, interviews need to be published/hosted by reliable sources just to assure that they are reporting the words of the interview properly. While I agree, there isn't much sense for them not to, we are dealing with someone who is living and thus greater concern needs to be put out to make sure that we are reporting their words correctly. On the other hand, this topic doesn't seem to have generated a lot of mainstream press coverage. I think the best we can do, and the best I can do, is leave this information out there for other reviewers to judge for themselves. As a personal opinion, I"m a bit leary of chat logs and the like. I'm not trying to imply that the hosts of these sources aren't perfectly honest individuals, it's more that I'm leery of setting a precedent for other subjects. WP:RS purposely sets the bar high on allowing the use of these sorts of sources, and like it or not WP:RS is policy. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:48, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I fully understand and mostly agree, but the precedent has already been set with the FAC, FAR and AfD of Spoo. (Not that this would help me with this FAC, or that I endorse that article.) If I got confirmation from Knauf (I haven't approached him yet), would that help with keeping the chat logs as sources? Because if I can't keep them for a successful FA, I'd rather withdraw this FAC than removing the info from the chat logs and/or message board posts. Best, – sgeureka t•c 21:06, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'll point out that the Spoo FAR was in Sept of 2007, about eight-nine months ago. I'm just really leery of using interviews on fan sites or chat logs on websites. I won't oppose, but I don't like the feel of the concept at all. To me, they don't fit in with WP:V which says Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Maybe if he hosted the interviews himself, they might fall under the self-published rules, but as they stand they don't appear to me to satisfy the "reputation for fact checking" requirement. Ealdgyth - Talk 01:57, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Meets FA criteria. Regarding reliable sourcing, The writers are a reliable source as it's their show, so no matter where they give that interview, be it on video, in a DVD commentary, in a book, or to their fans in a forum, its still reliable. It's the person giving the information that needs to be reliable, no matter what format its in. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 19:47, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments Wow, looks like a really nice article. Most of my comments are fairly pedantic/nitpicky.
    • The main supporters of Brother Justin's storyline - "supporters" makes them sound like cheerleaders. How about "cohort" or something, in need of a better word? Think of anything better?
      • I chose "supporting characters".
    • the original character backgrounds only appeared as fractions of the character summaries on the official HBO website - the original bios were only a fraction of the length of the online bios? Likely it's the other way around.
      • Overcomplicated grammar. I changed it into "the original character backgrounds appeared in a summarized form on the official HBO website", although I am trying to think of a better sentence
    • part of the show's so-called Pitch Document - "Pitch Document" in quotation marks like so?
      • I added the quotation marks, but I think there is a risk that people might mistake the quotation marks as mock-quotes and will expect a real title later in the article. Maybe I'm just reading too much into this.
    • "dust bowl" used in lead; "Dustbowl" used in first subsection. Sweep through for consistency.
    • Daniel Knauf gave the latter as Ben' chain gang background - "Ben's chain gang background"?
    • Are we referring to Brother Justin as "Justin" or "Brother Justin"? Seems to be an on/off mixture of both.
      • Depends if the focus is his job or his family. But I switched to "Brother Justin" for constancy in all cases but two, which reference him as a kid
    • "[t]he only psychic Houdini was unable to debunk" - do we really need to square bracket-ise the caps-to-no-caps transition? We're quoting the same word.
    • In the "Characters affiliated with..." sections, make sure there's consistency when writing "(Seasons ...)" or "(seasons ...)" after the characters' actors.
    • Lila, who will become a major obstacle for the carnival's success - why future tense?
      • Because the character will only become an obstacle down the road. I switched to "Ruthie repeatedly approaches Lila, leading to Lila turning into a major obstacle for the carnival's success."
    • Why is Ruthie a "talker" but Jasper a "barker"? Both link to barker (occupation).
    • "Ferris wheel" or "Ferris-wheel"? Pick one and sweep through for consistency.
    • she killed her husband Hilton Scudder in the night of Henry's birth - "on the night"?
    • The producers generally preferred actors who were not strongly identified with other projects, but were willing to make exceptions such as for Adrienne Barbeau as Ruthie - maybe mention what projects Barbeau was known for.
      • Frankly, I don't know her from any of her other works even after reading her wiki article, but I have heard quite often how big a star she is. I wrote "make exceptions for established actors such as Adrienne Barbeau (Ruthie)."
    • Adrienne Barbeau (Ruthie) got cast after her first audition - "was cast"?
    • namely because "they don't play significant parts in the first few episodes." - maybe say "according to Phil Gallo of Variety".
    • Australian The Age stated that - "Australian newspaper", maybe, and maybe journalists name (Wendy Tuohy) because newspapers generally don't write their own articles ;)
    • Loving the use of exactly 100 refs. Don't add or remove any!! :D
  • Very, very nice stuff. I'm desperate to go out and rent the DVDs now! —97198 talk 13:54, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Excellent article. Referencing uses the most reliable sources available and since a range of sources are included it is acceptable to me.--Opark 77 (talk) 09:16, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Well -written, well-researched, well-sourced and strikes thhe right balance for an article about a fictional subject. An outstanding example of what a list of fictional characters can be and possibly the new metric by which to gauge future such nominations. Eusebeus (talk) 00:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong oppose for several reasons:
    • 1a: No substantive peer review or other process to check the prose for FA readiness. And it's far from the professional standard required by FA. The very second sentence, "Created by Daniel Knauf, the show aired on HBO between 2003 and 2005 and traces the disparate storylines of an ensemble of fictional characters revolving around two main characters: young Ben Hawkins working in a traveling carnival, and a California preacher named Brother Justin Crowe." is wordy, redundant, and contains mixed tenses. The very next sentence, "Carnivàle, a serial drama with a complex mythology, had a large cast, amounting to eighteen main cast actors over its two-season run." Confusion is already setting in.. the first sentence reads "Carnivàle is...", suggesting the show is currently running. But.. it "had" a large cast. A thorough copyedit by an uninvolved editor is needed before closer scrutiny is possible here.
    • 1c: Many absolutely unacceptable sources. No Yahoo! Groups, please. No authentication, no fact-checking, no anything. I won't rehash the outstanding items Ealdgyth posted, but I concur that they are not reliable sources.
    • 3: The rationales for the fair use images in use here are completely inadequate. The images are not the subject of critical commentary. --Laser brain (talk) 05:47, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is the source Daniel Knauf (100% reliable as he is the show creator), or is the medium he chose to present the information? Anyway, I emailed Daniel Knauf, and he replied. I have copy-pasted the content of the email below (I'll leave out my real name, my email address and his email address, but I can forward the email to anyone who is interested (please don't publish the private information then anywhere), or I can ask Knauf to do the OTSR ticket thing if there is still doubt about the reliability of the sources. Although I admit that I haven't read every little blurb about Carnivàle in magazine (who has?), but being quite a Carnivàle expert now, I stand by my opinion that I have used the best sources available, and I'll rather let this FAC fail than remove them (except for maybe the mooncross transcript, which wouldn't be a big loss). Edit: Knauf has already suggested on Sep 16, 2007 to have skeptics contact his agent Pete Stone in this yahoo message (registration required) if they doubt it is him at yahoo, so I didn't ask him a second time to confirm he is himself.

Knauf's email

Von: "Gene Otto" [my note: this name is one of Knauf's online identities together with "fboffo", as e.g. seen here - registration required] [removed_Knauf's_email_address] An: sgeureka [removed_my_email_address] Betreff: Re: Request for confirmation of your old interviews and chats, if you don't mind Datum: Wed, 14. May 2008 16:45:55 -0700 Thanks for all the hard work. I just happened across your articals and was kind of stunned at their scope and detail. Hey, maybe you could work on my Wikipedia entry"Daniel Knauf"!? It's looking kind of thin compared to the other stuff now. Heh... In any case, everything you have listed in the below email is accurate and I officially confirm that I said everything that's attributed to me. If they have any questions, they can reach me through my agent, Pete Stone, at ICM in Los Angeles, (310) 550-4482 Daniel Knauf

Original Message ----

From: sgeureka [removed_my_email_address] To: Daniel Knauf [removed_Knauf's_email_address] Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 1:46:24 PM Subject: Request for confirmation of your old interviews and chats, if you don't mind Dear Mr. Knauf, I bought Carnivàle on DVD last summer and I am still hooked (Carnivàle unfortunately never aired in my country). Since my main online pastime is being a wikipedian, I wrote several wikipedia articles about Carnivàle. One article already became a Featured Article months ago and may appear on the wikipedia main page someday. Another of my articles, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_of_Carniv%C3%A0le , is currently a Featured Article Candidate, and the only real opposition is that some editors still doubt the reliability of some online interviews and chats you supposedly did. If you aren't busy otherwise, can I ask you to confirm that you participated in the following interviews and chats, and/or that you stated the following? I know Beth didn't mess with the transcripts etc., but wikipedia doesn't know this, and they won't just take my word for it. But your word would be a big help. If you reply, I'd forward your reply to the candidacy page without publicizing your email address. Greetings from Germany, [removed_my_real_name] ( sgeureka, email [removed_my_email_address] ) Interview chud.com with Knauf before the season 2 premiere: http://chud.com/articles/articles/1255/1/THUD-INTERVIEW-DAN-KNAUF-CARNIVALE-PRODUCER/Page1.html - (Knauf) "We have a detailed, fully developed mythology, rules and backstories for all the characters, but we use those as a foundation rather than part of the visible structure. We learned to trust that the buried details would surface in their own time, that the story would unfold organically, without the sense that the writers are giving it the whip." Interview Beth with Knauf at CarnyCon: http://www.carnycon.com/bally/dan.html - (Knauf) the Creature of Light is Ben. - (Knauf) "Who's the Tattooed Man?" And "Who's the Usher?" And in the very first episode of the first season, who do we see in that cornfield that we recognize, with a tattoo on him? - (Beth) The Tattooed Man? - (Knauf) Yeah, but we also see one of our characters, and people have even done screencaps and discussed this. - (Beth) Well, I saw Justin. - (Knauf) Right, they've seen Justin! - (Knauf) We all know that Apollonia, when she was alive, exercised INCREDIBLE control over her daughter. And she really kept her daughter under tight wraps. And she'd done so since she was a baby, cuz she's lived inside her daughter's head. And so, when did things go wrong? When Sofie began rebelling against that. And once she couldn't control her daughter anymore, well, what did she do? First, she tried to drive her mad, maybe drive her to suicide. And when that didn't work, she tried to kill her. - (Knauf) Lodz was one of my favorite characters. Samson, I think, is my favorite. But Lodz was right up there. And killing him off was not easy. It wasn't an easy thing to do. But, first of all, it served a purpose to the story, and it was planned. But, second of all, it tells people, "Look, all bets are off." Interview Beth with Knauf shortly before the Season 2 premiere: http://carnivaleinterviews.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_archive.html - (Knauf) when I'd originally designed Brother Justin, I'd always thought of him as being a recurring character but not a regular character. [...] And it was clear from the pilot that we had nowhere to go. So we sat down and put our heads together, and basically I guess what you could say we did was took him back in time about a year or two. And we sort of decided, let's show a little bit of his path and how he got to where he ends up. How he starts out as sort of an ordinary Methodist minister in a little town. - (Beth) And you added the Sister Iris character then? She was not originally in it? - (Knauf) No, she wasn't. Summer 2003 Cable TCA Press Tour with the producers and actors, including you: http://www.centimes.demon.co.uk/Fragments/carnivaletcatranscript.html - (Moore) I think there was also the concern early on, as Clancy alluded to, there was an actual historical figure named Father Coughlin, who was an Irish Catholic priest and we didn't want it to be this is the Father Coughlin story. It felt like every time we went into that terrain, that that sort of took us there and we weren't trying to tell his particular tale. - He was certainly somebody that has an historical reference for us, but he wasn't the guy. Dan Knauf chats live - March 1, 2005: http://www.mooncross.net/carnivale/transcripts/chat_knauf.html - (Knauf) fan, the Iris Justin releationship is just as warped and incestuous as ever. She is, after all, procuring surrogate "sisters" to fuck (the maids) to relieve the pressure.

[end]
    • I am very uneasy about all this. It seems like almost the whole article is sourced to primary sources (HBO and other supposedly original documents) and many of them are based on circumstantial information. --Laser brain (talk) 22:08, 19 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll go over the image FURs again, although I feel they that the article has enough critical commentary about the look of the things that the images identify.

  • Image:Carnivale Season 1 Cast Promo.jpg - no problem I guess
  • Image:Benhawkins.jpg - identification of main character, in article: Of the many actors auditioning, the producers found that Nick Stahl brought a "particular introspection" to the character, "project[ing] a great deal of sensitivity, of quiet intelligence, of pain."[12] They also felt that his seemingly little-trained physique worked well for the 1930s period. [...] In reviewing the first three episodes, The New York Times commented that "Ben is a taciturn hero, and Mr. Stahl does a remarkable job of wordlessly conveying his character's moods and yearnings, as well as his ungainly grace."[14] Boston.com regarded "Stahl, with his watchful eyes, [as] one of the show's strengths. He has a boyish face, but the grim expression of a worn-out elder,"[15] and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer said Stahl "speaks volumes with his eyes and weary frown, so much so that his understated portrayal almost carries the series."[16] [...] Ben wore the same clothes in both seasons, and to make them look identical, around twenty multiples of his coveralls were made by hand. It took over six weeks to apply all stitches, patches and the roughly fifty holes, plus the aging process.
  • Image:BJustin2.jpg - identification of main character, the section is so long that he could be spun out into his own GA article, in article: Referring to Brown's portrayal as "a man of God in Carnivale," the Los Angeles Times saw Brown's "eyes always betray[ing] him as someone who, all things considered, would probably be happier caving in your skull and smoking a cigarette afterward than talking to you for another minute."[35] [...] Brother Justin's clothes were made period-correct from the beginning, but the character's foreboding presence was enhanced by fitting his frock on the waist and making the shoulders look bigger than usual for that time period.
  • Image:Carnivale Scudder Belyakov.jpg - important characters who don't appear in Image:Carnivale Season 1 Cast Promo.jpg, that's how a dream looks in Carnivàle
  • Image:Carnivale Libby Costume.jpg - example for period look of clothes, 10 major costume and make-up award noms+wins, in article: "The stripper clothes of Rita Sue and Libby were influenced by Mae West, harlot movies and silent films of the 1920s and 1930s, with additional research put into Asian harlots, Latin dancers and Hawaiian dancers."

As for the other stuff, I have fixed a couple of MOS issues, and I have read and tweaked the article again for prose. I'll approach the suggested editors soon. – sgeureka t•c 10:36, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Support after the prose has been polished up. It's quite good now, so why not coax someone else to sift through it: should be a quick job. Don't just correct these samples, please.

  • "before filming of the first season began"—missing word.
  • "appeared in a summarized form"—reduce to two words.
  • "the writers are benefited with more flexibility"—ouch.
  • "Ben has displayed inexplicable healing powers since childhood, and with the beginning of the series, he has also begun to suffer dreams and visions of people unknown to him."—what does "also" add? And there's another idle one shortly after. Weed them out, please.
  • "Season 2 concludes in Ben setting out to confront Brother Justin in California"—not "in", but "with". And another noun + -ing glitch. I'll borrow this for the exercises in this issue I'm writing. Try the existing one. TONY (talk) 04:41, 22 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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