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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The May Pamphlet/archive1

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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 by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 18 February 2022 [1].

The May Pamphlet

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Nominator(s): czar 19:18, 9 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

One spring day in New York City, the irascible Paul Goodman marched into his World War II draft interview with these anarchist essays under his arm as a prop or perhaps totem that would show his country just how unfit for service he was. While the military immediately understood, it would take another 15 years for his country to hear. While largely forgotten today, Goodman was namechecked in Annie Hall as a prevailing public intellectual of the American mid-century: Dutch uncle to the 1960s counterculture, philosopher of the New Left, and the country's most prominent living anarchist. Goodman's career consisted of revealing mystic truths about the need to live out one's own animal instinct and the larger society's unfulfilled duty in fostering those impulses. The May 1945 essays that became known as the May Pamphlet outline Goodman's application of Reichian psychological theory to anarchist politics in the interregnum between the social revolutionary class warfare of turn-of-the-century classical anarchism and the rise of personal politics-focused, late-20th century contemporary anarchism. You can see Goodman bridge the twain in these very essays as he confronts the impossibility of large-scale social change by calling not for a massive social revolution but for an inward reformation: to instead realize one's own innate, individual powers and form a new society by living intentionally within the shell of the old.

Hopefully that's enough exposition to convince you to read this little article I've been incubating for the past several years, with debts to reviews from @Eddie891, Z1720, and Grapple X. It is part of a larger project to better cover Goodman's works and other major written landmarks of anarchism on Wikipedia. Let me know what you think? czar 19:18, 9 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Quick comments:

This looks very good and I look forward to reading it properly (along with the book itself) in the coming weeks.

  • that footnote about what libertarian meant in the 1940s has nothing to do with the subject of this article. If the term is confusing, just say anarchist instead, or clarify as libertarian socialist. Writing the bulky "libertarian (anarchist)[a]" four or five times is the worst of all worlds.
  • you should add some pictures to the article.
  • An entire paragraph in Themes and analysis is unreferenced.
  • Listing out the individual essays at the start of Synopsis is unnecessary IMO. What is the reader to do with just a bunch of essay names? Much more useful to name them only when discussing their content (which you do in the rest of the section anyway).
  • There needs to be some indication as to how long the whole thing is; I had to open the archive.org link to see that it's only a 50-page work. Maybe adding an infobox to the lead will help get these dry details (also: publication date etc) out of the way quickly.—indopug (talk) 11:43, 11 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Indopug, thanks! :) The "definition of libertarian" footnote was recommended in the peer review. Given that Goodman himself and nearly all sources on the subject use the word "libertarian" repeatedly, referring to the anarchist tradition, the footnote felt like a reasonable compromise to provide the reader with context. It's mainly for post-1980 readers in the U.S., who would otherwise not understand why the article doesn't talk about free markets.
    • I'm not familiar with any other essay collection FAs but I would think that a table of contents is better off listed than put in prose, and that it's an altogether better reference and reading experience (as signposting).
    • re: images, open to suggestions. There are no free use images of the author. It occurs to me that some of the initial essays might be out of copyright but... let's see how far I get on that expedition.
    • Addressed the other two czar 03:31, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I went copyright spelunking and added some new, free use images; will ping for image re-review after this thread wraps up czar 05:18, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done. Version reviewed

  • Be consistent in when/if publication locations are included and how these are formatted
  • Goodway: the link and publisher don't match up with the publication date. Suggest checking others as well. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:19, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Nikkimaria, thanks and updated! Goodway 1999 is the same as the linked Google Books reprint. (Earthscan is a Routledge company.) I only linked Google Books for ease of verification but can either remove the link or instead swap the reference for Goodway 2006, which repeats the same claim verbatim, if preferable. Let me know if you would like scans of any of the sources. czar 16:19, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would suggest clarifying in the citation that it's a reprint. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:25, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The citation is not a reprint though—it's correct as written. Only the link is a reprint, and it has the exact same page numbering. Most citation links are a courtesy. I wouldn't remove the page numbers if I linked a web version without page numbers, etc. czar 02:00, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Vaticidalprophet

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This is a fascinating article! Saving my spot.

The first comment I'll have to give, unfortunately, is that I completely agree with Indopug about the "libertarian (anarchist)[a]" repetition -- it consistently dragged me out of the article as I read. The use in the lead is good, because it contextualizes why a term confusing to a modern audience was applied to this part of concept-space. The following uses would all be net improvements if substituted with "anarchist" (or "libertarian socialist", depending which is contextually preferred for each mention). Vaticidalprophet 05:48, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Vaticidalprophet, thank you! And that's fair. I've reworded where context permits and kept the translation/repetition to the few parts where it's necessary to historicize Goodman's words. Tricky stuff, this. czar 06:45, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, it's a tricky balance. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets tweaked again a few times in the course of FAC; there are a few ways one could defensibly put it, and not many good models at FA level of articles with similar terminology issues (though I know some at GA level). I'll come back to start leaving comments in...the next couple days at most, hopefully; I'm reviewing a couple articles at GAN too so I'm between a few places, but feel free to drop a note on my talk I don't currently have pings on and I'm not sure if or when I'll put them back if I'm not here by the end of the week. Vaticidalprophet 21:08, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments
General
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  • Image query: You mentioned to Indopug earlier that there are no free images of Goodman, but are we actually sure of that? His life overlaped suitably with the periods where image copyright was much harder to secure than it is now, and I imagine anarchists weren't dotting the Is and crossing the Ts of every copyright notice -- you've already been able to find some other PD images under the same principle. Calling this a query, not any sort of request, because it's more of an idea of something that if it pans out could be used to improve the article's illustration than an actual point of contention -- but it'd certainly be nice if it panned out.
    • There are no dust jacket or inside author portraits in the HathiTrust (public domain) scans and the Library of Congress didn't have anything easy on file when I checked. I've been to all of his major archives and no images jumped out as being potentially public domain. These early libertarian/anarchist journals are a little different in that they were tiny so had a high chance of not having their copyright renewed but they also didn't print illustrations (because they were small). I'd like to reach out to his estate eventually and ask but just wanted a little more to show for it first. czar 22:40, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The footnote dips momentarily into parenthetical referencing, which is no longer good practice.
Lead
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  • Again, a query: would some reference to the genesis in Goodman's draft interview be due here?
    Eh, I'd consider it trivia for the lede. Perhaps a good hook for FAC, though :) czar 23:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • You have some heavy repetition of "anarchist" here (which is an improvement on heavy repetition of "libertarian (anarchist)[a]", but nonetheless worth keeping an eye on). The reader can be assumed, from the fact the article opens with "is a collection of six anarchist essays", to know the subject matter. I'm specifically looking at the line The anarchist essays were not well known, which is better rendered as simply The essays were not well known.
    Yes, that's leftover from yesterday's changes. I've dialed it down. czar 23:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do small, New York and small, anarchist need those commas? (Also look for later uses of similar sentence structure -- I've spotted it in some of the other sections, but not yet combed through them.) This might be a matter of individual dialect, so I'm not certain, but at least from my dialect's eye it looks off.
    It's stylistic. I used to not include commas between adjectives but was once taken to task for that at a FAC many moons ago, so now I do because why not—it adds a little clarity. Nothing in the MoS that I know of, though. czar 23:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Later sections to come. Vaticidalprophet 21:20, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Publication
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  • The listing of the two bluelinked journals beside each other in the list of three creates somewhat of a MOS:SEAOFBLUE -- at first glance I read Politics, Why? as the name of one journal (certainly sounded a plausible one...). I note Retort (journal) exists as a redirect, and while not in-depth, there's enough in the way of basic names-and-dates to get value from the link. Alternatively, you could move the names around to prevent the sea.
    Politics, Why? is an acceptable summary of this article. Rephrased. czar 05:46, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is one-man publisher re. Vinco supposed to be read as meaning it was essentially Goodman's personal imprint he published his own books under, or that it was a (very) small press run by someone else publishing multiple authors, or some intermediate point?
    As small as a press can be, as in barely a press. Do you think it needs further clarification? czar 05:46, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I wasn't so much confused as to how many people were involved with it (the "one-man" part was clear) as to whether the one man was Goodman himself, self-publishing with an imprint, or if it was a different sole proprieter running a small press. The linked source is useful clarification, so it might be nice to add some of that in the article, as it also serves the purpose of explaining why Vimco went out of business/why other people were publishing its unsold books. Vaticidalprophet 06:45, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Done czar 03:33, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(Finding I don't have too many comments :) ) Vaticidalprophet 05:01, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Synopsis
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Sorry about the gap -- I've had inconsistent computer access for the past week, but it should improve soon. This section is in good shape (and I find the list of essays defensible; I'm at pre-FAC PR for an essay collection myself, and it really is difficult to figure out how to format that kind of thing). My only query here regards "Revolution, Sociolatry, and War", the fifth essay, was first published in Politics as an anarchist response to Marxist theory typical for the magazine -- should this be read as saying Marxism was the typical allegiance of the magazine, and Goodman was writing an anarchist response to its usual takes, or that the usual take was anarchist interpretations of Marxism? The current phrasing is slightly unclear. Vaticidalprophet 00:35, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good point—rephrased czar 04:06, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Inclined to support. I read through the remaining sections and couldn't spot any nits I want to pick. This is excellent work and a good read. Vaticidalprophet 01:50, 28 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Support from Kavyansh

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  • "Three of these journals—Politics, Why? An Anarchist Bulletin, and Retort—published half of the essays that would later be compiled as The May Pamphlet." — In what order are these journals listed? I suggest them to be in chronological order of essays, the one in which the first essay was published being the first. Same should be done with the info box images as well.
    • For these listings, I tried to go with what was visually/aurally most pleasing. It's a minor detail so happy to change it if others feel strongly. czar 03:33, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "with the exception of "Revolution, Sociolatry, and War", written in October" v. "Another publisher, Alexander Katz, read "Revolution, Sociolatry and War" in Politics and " — Is there a comma after 'Sociolatry' in article's title or not?
  • "After Goodman's death" — I'd mention the year as well.
  • "his literary executor Taylor Stoehr used" — I see this as WP:SOB
  • "Throughout the May Pamphlet" — Isn't 'The' a part of the title? It should be italicized and 'T' should be capitalized
  • " "Free action is to live in present society as though it were a natural society" goes the pamphlet's main maxim." — upto you, though I try to avoid starting a sentence with a quote. There are various such places in the article.
  • "The exact meaning of "free" and "natural" is imprecise in this context yet generally refers to the ability to work in mutual aid without coercive legal pressure to do otherwise." — I think we should attribute as to who believes this. Else, it slightly appears WP:OR.
  • "The essays generally encourage draft and war resistance" — I think here, the essays encouraged Draft evasion, not the draft.
  • Currently, "draft" and "draft dodging" are linked to the same article. The second instance should be un-linked as to avoid duplicate linking.
  • "Notably, the May Pamphlet departed from radical conventions in their absence of class analysis and were closer to writings on Ancient Greek direct democracy than those on Marxist or Syndicalist working-class radicalism" — I see that as MOS:EDITORIAL, though feel free to disagree. (just a suggestion)

That is it. Excellent work on the article! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 18:09, 24 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Appreciate the review, @Kavyansh.Singh! Believe I've addressed your points in the text, when you have a moment to review. czar 03:33, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Great work! I am satisfied with the changes made. Happy to support! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 16:15, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - pass

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I will review over the coming week. As a first comment, I think that the footnote should be better sourced. I'm sure that we can find academic and footnoted works explaining the relationship between "libertarianism" and "anarchism". JBchrch talk 18:19, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @JBchrch—looking forward to it! Let me know if you need copies of any of the sources.
re: the footnote, I believe I've picked the best source for the job and I linked to the full article I wrote on the definition for those who want further detail. czar 18:38, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for your offer @Czar. Fortunately I have institutional access to a lot of online sources and a good library close-by so I don't expect to be bothering you too much.
I was hoping you would accept my suggestion because, unless I've missed something, the claim During the time of The May Pamphlet and as invoked by Goodman, "libertarian" was synonymous with anarchism, does not seem to be verified in Marshall 1992. What I’m reading is "The word 'libertarian' has long been associated with anarchism" and below "For a long time, libertarian was interchangeable in France with anarchist". The concept of the two words being synonymous in America in the 40s does not appear to be clear from the source. JBchrch talk 21:21, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Would this addition satisfy your suggestion? czar 22:05, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks it does. Do we still need to leave During the time ... with anarchism (anti-authoritarian socialism). in footnote b then? Could it be removed? Also, as a suggestion for improvement, perhaps consider paraphrasing Cohen in footnote instead of a straight quote. JBchrch talk 00:41, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Done czar 01:30, 30 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I'm going to be a bit more of an annoyance than Vaticidalprophet above and suggest that you put the last part of the footnote between <ref></ref> tags. WP:PARREF is not entirely explicit on this point, but Template:Harvard citation no brackets#Usage interprets the RfC as saying that harv citations may only be used inside of such tags. JBchrch talk 01:31, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The RfC was about inline parenthetical referencing, not how {{harvnb}} (nb = no parentheticals) could be used. For all intents and purposes, it already is within ref tags—i.e., it already is a footnote—the same as a standard harv footnote just with extra text, similar to how scholarly monographs do it. If you prefer, I can shove the full citation into the note instead of using the short footnote? But having a footnote within a footnote would be an inelegant solution. czar 01:53, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The thing is that the template docs for both Template:Harv and Template:Harvnb were updated to reflect a deprecation of their use outside of ref tags (the latter being a transclusion of the former), seemingly without controversy, and thus seem to reflect the implicit consensus on what the rules are... and I'm just the guy doing the source review 🤷‍♂️. I really don't see the issue about references inside of footnotes, though. Looks at this recent FA, for instance: Louis_Rwagasore#Notes. JBchrch talk 02:18, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I went poking through the harv template talk page to see if this was raised before (it was) and what the solution was (this). By that read, use of shortened/harv text within {{efn}} is kosher. (To the issue of references inside of footnotes, I've done this myself in other articles, but it then takes three clicks to get from article text to efn to sfn to full citation, which is what I meant by inelegant, hence why I'd want our readers to avoid that experience.) czar 04:12, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for linking to this discussion, which I had missed. I'm going to accept that the state of the consensus on harv references outside of refs tags but inside of a Template:efn is not clear, and "pass" that specific citation form. However, I will definitely push for a clarification of the docs after this. JBchrch talk 14:11, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Czar sorry for the delay, but I've not forgotten this. I'm planning on finishing the overall review tonight and do spot checks over the week-end. JBchrch talk 15:11, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Three comments:

  • The location parameter is not uniformly filled: sometimes, we have only the city, sometimes we also have the state/country.
  • I have a small reservation about the high quality-ness of Fisher 2010 (i.e. graduate student writing for a radical publisher), but it should be fine since it is always used in connection with another source, except in ref 4. However, that can be fixed by adding Fisher's own ref 14, which is Stoehr's Here How Next.
  • As an advance point of spot-check, I would raise that Widmer 1980 talks about the sexuality of "children" and not of adolescents. JBchrch talk 23:24, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    re: location parameter, my understanding is that we use the state when the location would be ambiguous without it, e.g., Westport, CT, but Detroit. I'm also amenable to killing this parameter to save on space. Addressed the other two, though I don't think Fisher was that bad. czar 00:44, 5 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. I don't have a problem with this mode of citation, as it seems to have a reasonable basis. As a suggestion for improvement, though, I would recommend spelling out the state, i.e. UK -> United Kingdom and NJ -> New Jersey, for WP:WORLDVIEW purposes. Besides this, I see no problem with the sourcing: all the sources are all high-quality, all the content is cited to a source, and the formatting is consistent. Spot check will be done between today and tomorrow. JBchrch talk 16:44, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • As I'm beginning spot checks, I see that Stoehr has four works cited, referred to as Stoehr 1977, Stoehr 1977b, Stoehr 1994a and Stoehr 1994b. Logically, Stoehr 1977 should be referred to as Stoehr 1977a? If you agree, I can try to do it myself (I used to know how to do it). JBchrch talk 19:43, 7 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Done! And I struck the locations. czar 03:22, 8 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Spot checks
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Stoehr 1977b

  • 4. The source says “One story has it that he went to his confrontation with the U.S. Army carrying these essays under his arm.” So it’s not really asserted as a fact by Stoehr. I also don’t see the mention of May ?
    This is the result of replacing Fisher, as you requested above. :) I still would prefer Fisher, for what it's worth. czar 04:42, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I see. The problem is that for me Stoehr is higher quality than Fisher (for the reasons mentioned above). So if the two are contradicting—especially if Fisher says that something happened and Stoehr, who was personally acquainted with Goodman, says that it's "one story"—, I would err on the side of caution. JBchrch talk 18:35, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I think this may be splitting hairs. We don't know if Stoehr's "one story" quip is hedging or rhetorical, but he shouldn't have to specify that "Goodman was holding The May Pamphlet" when he says Goodman wrote a half-dozen essays on "drawing the line" as there are no other essays. We don't know what lengths Fisher went through to corroborate his 2010 introduction while Stoehr was still alive (until 2013). This is why we defer to the source in so far as the source is reasonably reliable for the claim. So the question here is what, exactly, is being challenged about Fisher's reliability? Since reliability rests in the editorial process, Fisher's graduate student status does not signify anything about his reliability in itself (though, to be clear, he finished his doctorate in 2015). I know Goodman's draft board story has been repeated and mythologized elsewhere, though I have not the time to dig through dozens of unindexed mentions to find it, which is why I used these sources here as sufficient—sources that I do not see as being in conflict. If, for reasons of rigor, it would be better to label this anecdote as apocryphal or remove elements as being trivial, we can do so. But I think it would diminish the character of a claim that is not controversial or, to my eyes, truly contested. czar 17:58, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    It's important to me that we are not asserting as a fact something which is, as you eloquently put it, apocryphal. I have now consulted Stoehr 1994, p. 31, which is Fisher's second source. This source gives a vivid, though short, description of Goodman's draft interview and yet does not mention him bringing these essays. My question would be: why would we regard as canon an introduction written by a graduate student, published by a non-academic press, in a volume without a scientific editor, whose parts about Goodman's life are sourced explicitly to material by Stoehr (see note 1), and whose own sources (i.e. Stoehr) either don't mention the event or label it as "one story"? What is more probable, that Fisher goofed up and no one noticed, or that he had access to exclusive material that Stoehr did not know about? So yes, sorry for being that guy, but I would prefer to label the anecdote as apocryphal if you'd agree. JBchrch talk 01:48, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Stoehr 1977b, p. xviii: ... he tried to write out his political credo, in a half dozen essays on ... "drawing the line." One story has it that he went to his confrontation with the U.S. Army carrying these essays under his arm. ... He published most of these essays in Why?, Politics, and Retort, and then collected them as The May Pamphlet, which remains the major philosophic statement of his anarchist position.
    Stoehr's 1977 introduction to Drawing the Line does mention Goodman bringing the essays. For the sake of resolving the impasse, I've added the "one story" caveat to the article. Hopefully in the future I will add the other corroborating references I mentioned when I happen across them. czar 02:55, 14 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, it does say that ("One story has it"), which is why we are having this conversation, remember? 🙃 Anyway, this solves this issue and completes this spot check. JBchrch talk 00:58, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Stoehr 1994a

  • 9. OK

Widmer 1980

  • 2b. Don’t see the “small”?
    I'd think that's in WP:SKYBLUE territory—he was a vanguard writer in a marginalized, bohemian community, hence small journals and small readership. If necessary, there are plenty of citations that call them "little magazines" but I think it'd be overkill to add a citation just for that.[2][3][4] czar 04:42, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure that this qualifies for SKYBLUE. Some bohemian and marginalized writers have sometimes lended spots with prestigious magazines and publishers, and the concept that Goodman was relegated to publishing in small anarchist journals is interesting enough to deserve a citation, in my view. JBchrch talk 18:42, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Added Graham czar 17:58, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • 2c. I find it to be a little more subtle than this since Widmer says that for Goodman, “society was in considerable part an aesthetic issue” (emph added)
    How would you suggest softening it? Part of the difficulty of paraphrasing literary criticism is that it's flowery writing about flowery writing. I'd consider the way I wrote it to be accurate. czar 04:42, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    How about largely, essentially or in large part? I wouldn't know anything about literary criticism, though: I tend to write about finance, i.e. dry writing based on even dryer sources. JBchrch talk 05:08, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Done (and in that case, writing for WP here would be [an attempt at] clear writing about flowery writing about flowery writing) czar 05:52, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • 18. OK (correction above already done)
  • 25c. Could you give me a quote for “sterilization” = denial part?
    [5] czar 04:42, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry, I don't see where it's stated that Goodman means "denial" when he says "sterilization". JBchrch talk 05:10, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Ah, I thought you were asking for Widmer's source for "sterilization". Widmer is describing Goodman as saying that the watering down, or alienation from, or refusal to acknowledge (i.e., denial of) natural life events (birth, death, sex) is what leads individuals to turn away from other natural outlets and act out in other ways, with misplaced motives. I'll leave it as just "sterilization" if that's sufficient for understanding. czar 05:52, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    In that case, I think it would be preferable to leave it as "sterilization". JBchrch talk 18:36, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • 31. OK

Honeywell 2011

  • 19c. OK.
  • 19d. OK.

Cornell 2016

  • 22b. The content is verified, just the relevant pages are 163-164. But could you explain why you left out of the article that assertion that “it implicitly posited conscription and antigay discrimination, rather than hunger, as the primary threats to freedom and well-being that should concern anarchists”?
    The "implicit" is inference. That the essays advocated for gradualism is the main takeaway. czar 04:42, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    👍 JBchrch talk 05:06, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Genter 2002

  • 20 OK
  • 21 OK

Smith 2001

  • 11d OK

Additional spot checks:

Widmer 1980

  • 24 OK
  • 33a OK

King 1972

  • 38 OK

Cornell 2016

Source review is a pass. JBchrch talk 00:59, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

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All images have a copyright tag indicating that they were produced without a copyright notice. The source URL doesn't show any notice but I am not sure if they show the cover page of the pamphlets/journals which is where I would expect the tag if there were one. Is there some kind of structure to image placement? ALT is passable but slightly longish. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:37, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, @Jo-Jo Eumerus. There are full issues of the journals available online too, which I checked for copyright notices. Politics was the only one with such a notice but I did not find a renewal in the Stanford search. re: structure to placement, I put covers in the lede for basic identification and title pages of the essays near the contents in the order in which they appeared. czar 14:47, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
OK, that only leaves the ALTs. Can they be made shorter? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:06, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Jo-Jo Eumerus, yes, done! czar 03:15, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like this is a pass image review wise. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:50, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Bilorv

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Finally found the time to look at this one.

  • "He suggests for individuals to resist such conditions" – Seems more natural as "He suggests that individuals resist such conditions ..."
  • What ideological inclination did Partisan Review have at the time of Goodman's dismissal? Without this context, it's hard to understand why Goodman was fired for his pacifism.
  • "Three of these journals ... published half of the essays" – That would be three essays. Was it one essay in each? Or some overlap? If the former, that could be made clearer.
  • "The author considered the topics to have overlap, both a matter of aesthetics" – Would that be aesthetics the branch of philosophy? Or just the informal term? In either case, if Goodman's reasoning that his anarchist writing was "aesthetics" can be put briefly then that might help, as it's not obvious to me what he views the connection to be.
  • "... and swapped the opening essay in his 1962 book" – Swapped the order of the essays? Or wrote a new introduction to the pamphlet? Or something else?
  • "which expanded to include other political essays" – Might be cleaner as "which was expanded ..."
  • "to which the anecdote is for individuals" – Is "anecdote" right here? Should it be "antidote"?
  • The sentence "The term's definition has become more ambiguous since the late 20th century ..." is repeated almost exactly in prose and in the footnote. I'm not sure the repetition is useful.
  • "The major themes of The May Pamphlet are (1) tools with which ..." – Not sure the numbering in this sentence is necessary or desirable.
  • "the possibility of summoning "natural powers" to invent solutions to social dilemmas" – This sounds a bit supernatural, which I'm not sure is intended. How about "the possibility of using 'natural powers' to solve social dilemmas"?
  • "... his reliance on instinct was sometimes among his most endearing traits, except when he could not identify his deeper instincts and could neither articulate his confusion nor admit it" – Seems like opinion needing attribution rather than something to state in Wikipedia's voice.

Overall, the writing is quite clear and I (think I) understood a lot of ideas that were previously unfamiliar to me. No concerns about structure, scope, sourcing etc. A thought-provoking read. — Bilorv (talk) 21:58, 3 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the kind words, @Bilorv. Addressed your points here. czar 04:19, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support: passes the FA criteria. Thanks for the speedy fixes. — Bilorv (talk) 09:25, 4 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Serial

edit

Placeholder. It's hard to believe that it's near four years since Czar was kind enough to comment on my own foray into a slightly earlier aspect of anarchist history. Looking forward to this. SN54129 20:16, 10 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • "drawing the line" in the lead: is it a quote? (Being in quotes as it is.)
    It's a turn-of-phrase used throughout the subject and the WP article, so quoted as a term of art czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "the ugliness of wartime social conditions" -- could this be clarified? (UIgliness being in the eye of the beholder, and all!)
    I think it's generally accepted that wartime conditions tend to be trying times. The sources do not specify that Goodman is responding to poverty or scarcity or any singular element of wartime conditions. czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "He started the essays in advance of his May 1945" -- the first two only? Did he know he was going to be called up in May, and start writing towards that deadline, or was it a coincidence?
    Sources do not specify this detail but they imply that it was related and not coincidental (regardless of when he got his notice, he had to know that he would be appearing for the draft at some point) czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "war-supporting" -- pro-war.
    The former is softer in that it is supporting this specific war rather than being generally in favor of war czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • If Politics is styled politics, should we not use that?
    We don't use the stylization, per MOS:TMRULES czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "each published an essay in what" -- from what.
    This might be a regional preposition usage difference but I think this is fine, i.e., individual essays were published in the compiled collection czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggest "Printed by Irving Novick's one-man publishing outfit, Vinco, it sold poorly" -- Or something to remove duplication of print.
  • Yes, I think I would include the material on Blankertz: the fact that it (and others of Goodman's) were deemed worthy of translation is relevant.
    Even when I don't include every other time the work was excerpted in English? I thought it was trivia. czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • The sentence re. libertarianism is unsourced?
    It has an extended footnote with its own sources. czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Note: I'm mostly not commenting on the synopses, as I don't have the material and it legitimately self-sources.)
    Sounds good but I didn't use primary sources for this section, if that makes a difference :) czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Notwithstanding the above, why is it "a touchstone for" in the body, but "a suggestion for" in the adjacent image?
    It had a different title in its initial publication pre-compilation czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Clever use of the possessive to avoid SEAOFBLUE...not sure about it though!
  • We have an article on Draft dodging.
    It's linked in the prior paragraph and I was asked to unlink the second version, though I agree it would have been appropriate to link it twice. czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "wrote Goodman's biographer" -- is this also Stoehr? She is only called literary executor when named.
    Yes, he was both czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "like that of unanimity" -- if I've read this right, how is unanimity a theoretical concern?
    It refers to the sixth essay in the pamphlet and the idea that unifying thought it what sharpens its purpose czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • "first explicitly political works...foremost political writings"
  • Notably, in Wikivoice, is, unfortunately, a WP:OFCOURSE.
    The source remarked on its noteworthiness absence of class analysis in this case czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Should The Dilemma be u/c D?
    Proper noun in the source, hence the uppercase czar 18:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
SN 1492#5, any further thoughts? Gog the Mild (talk) 15:30, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yo Gog, just an FYI, but pings to user talk pages don't give alerts, only user pages themselves. Cheers, SN54129 15:56, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Gog the Mild and Gog: I note that Czar has successfully—with subtlety and delightful politeness—refused to action any of my points. Hah! Imagine if Czar came to my current FAC and I did the same thing, there'd be uproar  :) in any case, my suggestions in these proceedings are rarely more than that—suggestions—so there was certainly no pressure to use them, and indeed, their reasoning for their decision seems sound, so I'm pleased to support this article's promotion. SN54129 16:14, 18 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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