Talk:Alice (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Caeciliusinhorto (talk · contribs) 13:13, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

I will review this article. Expect initial comments in a few hours. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 13:13, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Having read through the article, I have two major initial concerns:

1. There are portions of the article where it seems that the focus is on the Alice books, rather than Alice herself.
2. The article seems to use quotes excessively and unnecessarily. I would significantly cut down the number of direct quotations.

I have a number of more minor quibbles too, but those are the two major ones.

Some examples of these problems:

• The entire subsection on stage adaptations mentions the names of two actresses that have played Alice onstage; the rest of it is just about the adaptations of the books. Does this merit a 150+ word paragraph?
• Even worse is the section on other adaptations, where I don't see a single word which is about Alice as a character.
• Paragraphs 2 and 3 of §Cultural impact are similar.
• re. misuse of quotes, what does the quote add here: author Lewis Carroll often did not remark on the physical appearance of his protagonist, offering only "very few details".
• or here: Edmund Evans printed the illustrations in colour through chromoxylography, which "used a number of woodblocks for each image, with colours mixed to produce a variety of hues and tones"?

And some minor quibbles:

• "Looking-Glass Land" is capitalised twice in the article. Is this really a proper noun?
• "Although she shares her name with Alice Liddell's given name": repetition of "name". Just "Although she shares her given name with Alice Liddell" is fine.
• "scholars disagree about whether or not she can be identified as being strictly based upon Liddell" – reads awkwardly at best. "scholars disagree about the extent to which she was based upon Liddell", perhaps?
• Of the section §Personality, only the second paragraph appears to be substantially about... well, Alice's personality.
• The footnote about the weather on that famous "sunny afternoon" is interesting, but not really relevant to the character Alice...

Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:19, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi! Thank you for taking the time to review! As for your major concerns, I definitely see your point about excessive and unnecessary quotes, and I'll be cutting back on them over the next few days. The second concern will be a little trickier to address, but certainly not impossible! I'm currently reworking paragraph 2&3 in Cultural Impact to focus on the character, i.e. how Victorian reviewers thought about her, and to shift the focus of paragraph 3 onto how Freudians read the character and less a general summary. And I think that brings us to the Adaptations section... I'm not opposed to getting rid of it entirely, and adding a line or two in Cultural Impact about the numerous Alice and Alice-like adaptations. You make a very good point that it doesn't have much to do with the character, and I'm struggling to see how it could be salvaged to focus on the character, and not exist as a retread of material covered far more skillfully elsewhere. I think I've addressed your minor concerns, if there are more, please let me know! Rapunzel-bellflower (talk) 23:58, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

I definitely think that you can get the article up to GA standard pretty easily from where it is. I'll check back on the article in a few days (perhaps Friday afternoon), and see how it's going; if you think it's finished before then, make a note here or on my talkpage and I'll get to it sooner if I can. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 07:58, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Coming back to this review slightly later than expected. It looks like you've fixed all of the issues I had with the article. Going through the Good Article criteria one last time, I noticed that File:Clara-in-blunderland-cover-1902.png doesn't seem to have an appropriate copyright tag. Presumably it is public domain (archive.org seems to think that it is); assuming that it was published in the US in 1902 as it was in the UK then template:PD-1923 is the correct one. Other than that, the article looks good to me. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:38, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Wonderful! I'm happy to hear it! I've gone ahead and added the template. Rapunzel-bellflower (talk) 01:14, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

All looks good to me. Congratulations! Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 09:12, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Non-reviewer comments

@Rapunzel-bellflower: you are citing the following sources which are not found in the bibliography (wrong years perhaps):

• Sigler 1990
• Rackin 1990
• Kelly 1990
• Kelly 2011 (should be Kelly & Lewis 2011?)
• Leach 2010

Regards – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 10:30, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, @Finnusertop: for catching that! You're correct: for the majority of the examples, I cited the wrong year. The last one refers to a later edition of Leach's work. I'll see if I can't work it out that only one edition is referenced. Best wishes, Rapunzel-bellflower (talk) 02:38, 27 September 2017 (UTC)