Talk:Paul Morphy/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Remsense (talk · contribs) 07:34, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

As a subject that I've done more than a bit of personal off-wiki research on, I'm snapping this up as my first GAN review with considerable pleasure.

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): It is factually accurate and verifiable. a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism): It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): b (focused): It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: It is stable. No edit wars, etc.: It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall: Pass/Fail:
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Remsense留 07:34, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

formatting/cosmetic tweaks

I'm doing some while I review, to the reference list, tables, and so on. of course, they are not necessary to the review, I just can't help myself. if they are in any way objectionable please don't hesitate to let me know! Remsense留 09:08, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Some comments or objections:

I prefer "games played at odds" to "games featuring odds". The former is closer to the terminology used back when chess was frequently played at odds.

"winning each match by lopsided margins" -- this is a singular vs. plural mismatch, which is why I used "winning matches ... by lopsided margins". That needs to be fixed, but you don't have to fix it the way I did.

"by his contemporaries and later generations alike" -- verbose and generally unnecessary, or were you really trying to say something here?

"A chess prodigy lacking formal training, Morphy emerged onto the nascent semi-professional chess scene in 1857 by dominating ..." -- a couple of problems here. We don't know if Morphy had "formal training"; Lawson doesn't mention any, but one can't prove a negative. Since we have already noted that there wasn't yet a world championship, "nascent semi-professional" is redundant, and distracting. I don't mind the use of the word "dominating"; but altogether, this whole sentence looks too florid. I believe in letting the facts speak for themselves.

It is misleading to say that Morphy spent "several years" touring England and France, etc. The actual time during which he was challenging his peers was less than a whole year. True, he went back to Europe in the 1860's, but he was long past his actual chess career by then.

Switching from "called" to "dubbed" is artificial, not exactly a violation of MOS:SAID but comparable.

"tempestuous" -- where did this come from? I thought Morphy just dropped out of chess. Indeed his tour of the U.S. upon returning in 1859 was more like a graceful farewell.

Notable games -- I am uncomfortable with not giving the first names of the opponents here. This section is not part of the narrative, so one can't assume that a reader coming to it has read the rest of the article and knows who is who.

I may take more than a day reviewing your changes, so for now I am just commenting, rather than going in and reverting, but I will be happy to do the latter eventually. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:33, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I'll do my best to fix all my own changes—I'm supposed to be the reviewer here, and while I can't help myself, I don't want to make a bigger mess for others. Remsense留 04:18, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Apologies if my initial flurry was a bit overeager, I hope you don't mind the initial back and forth. I think you're right for most of these, excepting that I think "games featuring odds" or another modern phraseology is the proper move—while it's not the terminology used at the time, we are writing for a modern audience and use comparably updated terms elsewhere. If you're not convinced, I'll happily revert those too and get on with reviewing.

For additional style considerations: in the transcripts of the games, i'm concerned by the use of MOS:BOLD, would you mind if I attempt to tweak it, keeping it equally distinctive and information-dense? Remsense留 04:31, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Also, you'll have to forgive my bad habit of going from memory of sources in this particularly bad context for it—I should've had taken out my copy of Lawson from the start, but had neglected to do so while I was still "copy editing"—I'll be more immediately scrupulous from here. Remsense留 21:48, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

For some reason I neglected to reply to this. I definitely prefer "at odds", and I don't think it's old-fashioned, but I'll try to find some more modern examples of it before I do anything. Regarding the typefaces in the notable games, I do not feel like I am an authority on this; the most recent tweaks to them before this GA review were by Ihardlythinkso (talk · contribs), but I don't think that the recommendations in WP:CHESS#Conventions are much help with those issues. Bruce leverett (talk) 18:00, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

The reference editor ProveIt seems to sometimes incorrectly replace "author=X Y" with "last=X Y". (The correct replacement would be "last=Y | first=X".) Bruce leverett (talk) 04:04, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Oh, I see that you caught this, thanks. Bruce leverett (talk) 04:06, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Bruce leverett, yes! it's given me trouble before, so usually I remember to check for it. I think a patch for this is waiting to be implemented. Remsense留 04:15, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

In the citation of Fischer's article "The Ten Greatest Masters in History", note that the cited source, which is Brady's magazine "ChessWorld", gives Fischer's name as "Bobby Fischer". I think we have to adhere to this in our citation, and not change it to "Robert James Fischer". Bruce leverett (talk) 04:12, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

You're right—I suppose I just felt weird about having the hypocorism in the citation. Remsense留 04:16, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm still going through the article line by line—but tonight I got distracted and added the book published by Fiske on the First American Chess Congress, among other things—there's an awful lot in this book that could be added to the article! It should be available to peruse via the Internet Archive url provided in the citation. What do you think? Remsense留 07:55, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I hit the thank button before I looked at this. Can't wait to get around to looking at Fiske.

Need to think some more about that long sentence about Morphy's "legacy" in the lead pgph. I will go along with your judgment that it isn't encyclopedic to proclaim that he was far ahead of his time. If it looks like puffery to you, it's probably puffery. But at the same time, it is trivial, and doesn't require "agreement", to say that he was far ahead of his contemporaries. Bruce leverett (talk) 15:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I think the point there is directly to ensure that it's keeping with the previous statement about disagreements. Perhaps it would make sense to swap the order of the two statements, so that the statement of his ability versus his peers can be plain, with disagreements about exactly what it means outside his era coming later? Remsense留 23:14, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Brooklyn Daily Eagle quote

There is some discussion in Lawson of how Morphy's reputation had reached New York well before he did, which I found thought-provoking, considering it was before the days of organized tournaments, let alone rating systems, etc. This can be seen on pp. 45-46 and 50-51. I would prefer to cite Lawson, rather than the Eagle, because (1) it is a (reliable) secondary source, and (2) one does not need to subscribe to Newspapers.com. Also, I would prefer to keep things chronological, by discussing this before the paragraph giving the results of the tournament, instead of at the end of that paragraph. Will get around to this late tomorrow. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:32, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I think it is fairly healthy to include secondary sources sometimes (newspaper articles are secondary sources, it's just a secondary source from the period), especially when we are relying particularly strongly on a specific work like with Lawson. Would you like to include a cite for Lawson as well, perhaps bundled in the citation? Remsense留 03:38, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Steinitz

I have already been told to fix a "citation needed" tag in order to get to GA, so I figure that we must fix our own "verification needed" tag, too.

The question is, did Steinitz see Morphy in New Orleans in the 1860s, or did he not? Lawson says nothing about this, and suggests (p. 300) that they had not met until 1883. But from this edit [1], and this earlier edit [2], apparently Landsberger's biography of Steinitz claims that Steinitz met Morphy "in the 1860s". Without having read Landsberger, I would guess that he indeed made that claim, since another experienced editor put in a proper citation for it. But I have no way to evaluate Landsberger's claim, without seeing his book and looking at his sources.

If I cannot make progress with this, I would be inclined either to altogether remove the mention of Steinitz meeting Morphy in the 1860's, or to put it in a footnote, along with the "verification needed" tag. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:06, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Google Books did not enable me to find the reference to Steinitz meeting Morphy in Landsberger's 1993 book, but in Landsberger's 2002 compilation The Steinitz Papers, one can see in a footnote on page 39 that Landsberger thought that Steinitz had first met Morphy in 1883. So I am definitely inclined to discard the sentence that we have and the citation of Landsberger, but will wait a while to see if someone can correct me on this. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:59, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I will remove the statement for now. Remsense留 06:20, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

14 December – Review

This was a great pick for my first GAN, I learned a lot doing it. Thank you to Bruce leverett for fixing up this article, for fixing up my mistakes when I started reviewing, and for being engaging throughout the process, and to MaxBrowne2 for their help during the review process as well.
Understandably, the biography of this article is built on the foundation of Lawson (1976; 2010), but there is a healthy body of independent, usually earlier works about his life and times that adds dimension and backs up most of the claims made in the article.
The other primary body of claims that require sourcing are the games, which are luckily well-documented and basically canonical in the chess tradition. The article is very no-nonsense (despite my attempts) yet it is clearly very valuable for someone wanting to learn about Morphy for the first time—I wish this article was in this state when I first learned about him.
Great work! I want to continue working on this article, but I've now gone through it in its entirety, and it clearly meets the criteria. Remsense留 06:33, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

My own first GA review was just a few months ago, Vera Menchik, and it too was one of those biographies where the author could and did rely heavily on one good book.

Thanks for your diligent work. I was also pleasantly surprised by your spiffing up of the tables and the References and Further reading. This of course had nothing to do with the GA criteria, but it all gave me the "Why didn't I think of that?" feeling. Bruce leverett (talk) 17:46, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

It's my specialty, the tables and tidying of cosmetics mostly for the editor—it's a real issue! :) Remsense留 22:20, 14 December 2023 (UTC)