Talk:Steve Ditko/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Reviewer: Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs) 04:44, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I'll review this; I'll begin with source reliability, then move to spotchecks, and finally to prose. I look forward to reading this; Ditko is an influential figure I know very little about. Vanamonde (Talk) 04:44, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm going to quickfail this review at this time. Rather than a single insurmountable issue, there are very many large issues that taken together are beyond the scope of this review process. I'll go into some issues in more detail below, but I have concerns over almost all the criteria. Ditko was a very influential figure, and there is substantial scholarly material analyzing themes and influences in his work: I don't see any of these being used. The standard here at GAN is lower than at FAC, but I would expect more than a single sentence about how objectivism influenced his creations. I'm also concerned about source reliability (particularly with primary sources) and spotchecks; my very first spot-check turned up problems of both verifiability and reliability. There are also lots of source formatting issues, with incomplete citation information for many books and book chapters in particular. The prose is very choppy, in a lot of places verging into listing Ditko's publications; this can be difficult with a prolific author, but more organization is needed. Finally, I don't want to make this a huge deal, but the major author is banned by ARBCOM, and the nominator has not done much to this article; I would expect to see at least some discussion with other contributors about GA readiness. This isn't a GA criterion, of course, but it does not give me confidence that the other issues I mention have been looked at at all.

To be clear, there is a lot to like here; this is a very detailed article, a lot of research has clearly gone into it, and it isn't a hagiography, as it could easily have become. However, the issues above are serious enough that I don't want to spend potentially weeks going over it many times. Some detailed comments follow, but these are examples only. If this is brought back to GAN after an overhaul, I would be willing to look at it again. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:22, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

• Sources that I'd expect to see used at least a little bit: [1], [2], and [3].
• An obituary from a funeral home is a questionable source in general, and should not be used for something like "an artistically talented master carpenter".
• FN5 only talks of Ditko being Rusyn, not his parents; while not a completely unreasonable assumption, it's not something I'd accept for ethic identity.
• Familysearch.org is marked as an unreliable source on WP:RSP.
• The New York Post (used many times), youtube, and tumblr are all a priori unreliable. There may be instances where they are permissible, but I don't see the need to use a questionable source on a figure so widely known. I particularly take issue with the use of the NYP for material about the financial disputes.
• There's a lot of usage of published comics as primary sources; this is sometimes okay, when a date or cover may be of interest to the reader, but in other cases isn't okay, such as FN19, in which the primary source clearly cannot support it being Ditko's third published piece.
• A lot of the material comes from fellow comic-book writers (I'm seeing David; Robinson; Brevoort; DeFalco; Kraft; Slifer. There may be more). These are good sources, insofar as they are experts on their subject; but where literary criticism exists (and it does here) relying on them so heavily doesn't seem reasonable to me. A wider distribution of sources is necessary.
• Ditko's creation of Dr. Strange needs better sources, which shouldn't be hard to come by; we should not be relying on the primary script and on a letter from Lee.
• I don't see how FN61 supports any of the content it's used for, and there are some substantial, broad claims in there.
• FN63 is primary, and isn't appropriate for the analytical claims it precedes.
• Block quotes aren't a substitute for summary of analytical content; I don't think the ones used are bad, but it's content that might flow better integrated into the rest.
• In the same section there's material about Ditko's style that really ought to go in a separate section. I would personally suggest combining material about style and influences, but there are other ways to do it.
• I'm not sure that a column on comicsbulletin.com can be considered reliable unless the author is an expert: webzines do not typically have much editorial oversight.
• Ditko-fever.com sounds to me like a fansite; I don't see why it is reliable.
• The Bibliography is far too long, currently as long on the scroll bar as the rest of the prose put together. I would strongly recommend a spinoff article, preferably in table form, and a summary here; possibly of major arcs that he was responsible for? Such a spinoff would also allow you to trim some bibliographic material that to me seems like too much detail in the main text.
• The sentence beginning "In June 2021" seems like puffery as written; it needs secondary sources at the very least, and may be better off omitted.
• FN87 is once again a primary source used for a somewhat analytical claim.
• FN116 and FN117 are both primary sources; do they actually verify the content about the history of the stories contained therein?
• A lot of the magazine/newspaper retrospectives mention Ditko's objectivism; but the paragraph that's in the text feels a little sparse in comparison.
• This is everything I found on a very quick pass. In addition to fixing these, I suggest skimming the article for similar issues, particularly on sourcing, before coming back to GAN. Regards, Vanamonde (Talk) 19:22, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.