Talk:Joan Mitchell/GA1

GA Review[edit]

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: Mujinga (talk · contribs) 17:23, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Overview[edit]

I'll take this on for review as part of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/January 2022‎. Mujinga (talk) 17:23, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- ** Thanks for the work so far @Asilvering: and @JennyHemlock:, the article is coming along well, I've left some comments below, please query anything if it's not clear. I'll put the review on hold now. Mujinga (talk) 14:08, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  Ok, I'm pretty sure I've addressed everything you've mentioned, though whether I satisfied the comments is of course up to you. Alt text comment still outstanding. -- asilvering (talk) 20:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - Nice one asilvering, I've made a few replies and indeed there's still the alts Mujinga (talk) 09:31, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    - @Asilvering: @Mujinga: Exciting progress! I've added the alt text for images and some further edits in response to comments on summary section, further reading, etc. Summarized those below as I went through them.--JennyHemlock (talk) 19:14, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV ()

3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant ()

Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Copyvio check[edit]

Earwig throws up a 30% comparison to NYT but it's a quotation. However there are 60% comparisons to the joanmitchellfoundation website which is way too high. Some of it is lists of exhibitions, but there are also a few phrases too close to what we have here which need rephrasing. I'll give some examples:
From https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/joan-mitchell/biography: In New York, she establishes a studio on 11th Street, and later 9th Street. She meets Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, and becomes part of the downtown scene, spending time at the Cedar Bar and participating in discussions at the Artists' Club and the wikipiedia article has: Beginning in 1950, she had a studio on 11th Street, and later 9th Street. She became part of the downtown scene, spending time at the Cedar Bar and participating in discussions at the Artists' Club
Mitchell's first solo museum exhibition of drawings, Joan Mitchell: Pastel, opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and article has Mitchell's first solo museum exhibition of drawings, Joan Mitchell: Pastel, opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in March 1992.
The MOMA entry gives a high percentage but that is listing the wikipedia entry
There's also a high match on joanmitchellfoundation.org/joan-mitchell/cv which is lists of exhibitions, arguably ok but then I'd say we don't necessarily need to have the sentence "The exhibition traveled to Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama (2003); the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2003-2004); and The Des Moines Art Center, Iowa (2004)" in the article.
Copyvio is grounds for a quickfail per WP:GAFAIL, since it's I believe your first GA nomination @JennyHemlock: I don't mind to discuss it first to see if you want to continue. I suppose the options are to carry on if you have time/energy to put some work in, or to stop here and renominate later on. I'd be happy to give comments either way and it seemed @Asilvering: is around as well. Cheers, Mujinga (talk) 17:57, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for taking on this review so quickly @Mujinga:, and for these initial notes. Yes, this is my first GA nom and I'm up for some editing and learning from the process. If you don't mind continuing to review and share comments, I will see what I can do. I went ahead and edited the passages you had flagged for copyvios. I did notice that the remaining sections flagged by Earwig are proper names (exhibition venues and exhibition titles) which feels somewhat unavoidable. Please advise if further editing along these lines is needed. Cheers, --JennyHemlock (talk) 20:08, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ah sorry @JennyHemlock, I should have run it through the copyvio checker when I was checking the image permissions. Worthpoint is almost certainly copying WP too, but I can't get a Wayback link for that one. It looks like you've got the bits that were from the foundation website. There's that "In 1988, Mitchell's work was showcased..." sentence that still brings up a bunch of highlight, but there's not a lot you can do with that except maybe delete it outright, since it's just a chronological list of galleries. Because it's a "major" exhibition I'd be inclined to leave that in, I think? It's flagging the name of every gallery and every instance of eg "Institute of Art" and "carry my landscapes", so there's only so low the % can get here. Thanks @Mujinga for holding the review open while this could get addressed. -- asilvering (talk) 21:50, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the replies I'm happy to carry on then; I do want to get the copyvio issues sorted first though. I agree lists of exhibitions can create a high percentage, but I took a lower earwig percentage one, for christies and it flagged up a very similar phrasing, namely Mitchell was rewarded with a considerable degree of commercial success in her lifetime. Between 1960 and 1962, Mitchell earned over $30,000 in art sales, a significant figure for a woman painter at that time. here versus This period also saw Mitchell rewarded with a considerable degree of commercial success. Between 1960 and 1962, Mitchell earned over $30,000 in art sales, a considerable figure for a woman painter at that time. there. Looking at the article history there's a few banned editors so that might possibly explain it. I'd suggest going carefully through each compared entry on earwig down to 20% to get the text straightened out. Mujinga (talk) 11:17, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I found an uncomfortably close sentence right at 20% so I kept going down to 10%. After that I spot-checked the ones that looked like they would have a reasonable amount of text and didn't find anything, so done now, I think. It looks like just mentioning two different gallery names is enough to get a 5-10% similarity rating. -- asilvering (talk) 23:53, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent work, nice one for doing it! Then we can proceed with the rest of the review Mujinga (talk) 13:46, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures[edit]

I thought I'd check picture licenses because that can also be a bit of a labyrinth sometimes. There's four pix, the two of Mitchell are licensed and appropriate. The two images of pictures have fairuse rationales. The "Joan Mitchell - No Birds.jpg" rationale doesn't work because it isn't referred to in the text. The other one, "Joan Mitchell - Untitled (1960).jpg" is ok because it is mentioned in the text.
Ah, bummer, I misunderstood that rule and thought I solved it with the caption. I've yanked the offending image. -- asilvering (talk) 23:18, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Pix could have alt captions per MOS:ALT
@JennyHemlock: I leave this one to you. I don't think I speak Art fluently enough to make a useful screen-reader description for this. -- asilvering (talk) 23:18, 15 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Asilvering: I just added in alt text for the images. Indeed, alt text for abstract paintings is challenging! If you are familiar with how alt text should be formatted for info box images vs in-line images, I'd be grateful if you could check that I coded it correctly for both formats.-- (talk) 17:07, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- One outstanding question for pictures: Would it be useful to add an External Images link box (modeled after the Mary Beth Edelson page which is a very useful reference), perhaps in the Style & Influences section, to round out the available visual resources? It feels thin to have just one painting represented, although of course you can also see paintings behind the portrait in the info box.--JennyHemlock (talk) 19:22, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments on prose[edit]

In the Early career (New York) section, the second half becomes a bit of a list and could be pulled into paragraphs Mujinga (talk) 13:48, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- same in the following sections Mujinga (talk) 13:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  I removed the single-line mentions of shows that weren't described further and were sourced to her CV, and pulled some more of the one-line sentences into neighbouring paragraphs. "Later years and death" is a bunch of short ones, but not so easily combined. It looks to me like the best way to solve those would be further expansion, rather than prose edits, so that's where I stop. -- asilvering (talk) 20:21, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - good work! i would still say it's worth making paragraphs in "Later years and death", let's see what JennyHemlock thinks as well Mujinga (talk) 09:30, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    
    The Later Years...section did feel clunky to me on a fresh read through. I moved some sections around for better flow and chronology and consolidated a couple of the paragraphs.--JennyHemlock (talk) 18:17, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's some curly quotes that need straightening in Style and influences Mujinga (talk) 13:51, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Done! -- asilvering (talk) 18:50, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's some dashes that need fixing per MOS:DASH; I use a handy script: User:GregU/dashes.js Mujinga (talk) 13:52, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Done, and thanks for this script! -- asilvering (talk) 19:03, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Generally per MOS:DUPLINK it's advised for wikilinks to appear no more than twice (lead and body), although there are times it's useful to add them for example on captions. I used a handy script linked at Wikipedia:WikiProject Birds/Tools to check for that Mujinga (talk) 13:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Ahhh thank you so much for linking this script, it's amazing. I've cut most of the doubled links. I left in the ones in the list of collections (weirder to have it inconsistent here, with some having links and some not, I think). -- asilvering (talk) 18:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In "Joan Mitchell Foundation", all the artists shoudl be cited rather than some. Could also trim the list down if you like. What an amazing resource for artists though Mujinga (talk) 13:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I cut it back to the artists from the last decade and added a link to the main artist listing. @JennyHemlock, if there are any particularly notable artists that you think should be listed, feel free to add any of those back in. -- asilvering (talk) 18:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- asilvering: I did add a few notable artists in from mentions in news articles and added those citations after each name.--JennyHemlock (talk) 18:43, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not convinced this list of galleries in "Select collections" is really necessary here, but happy to discuss. Mujinga (talk) 13:58, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen these kinds of lists in many articles on artists, probably because "has work in the permanent collections of major galleries" is a WP:NARTIST criterion. Since Joan Mitchell is both so obviously notable and so well-represented in galleries, I don't think this is terribly useful either. WP:WPVA says Although these types of lists may be found in artist's resumes, they are not very useful to Wikipedia readers if they only list institutional names and nothing else. A reader can typically find much better information through a basic web search. A list of notable works, as described previously, may optionally be annotated with the location of the artworks, if known and not expected to change. And the Foundation website lists 105 galleries: [1].

My inexpert, interested-reader opinion is that this section would be more meaningful if it addressed only a small handful of the most important collections: the ones with the most paintings, the ones with the most significant exhibitions, the ones that have been most important for her critical reception/analysis, etc. I do think it would be genuinely useful to have a section discussing (not listing) her most important shows/collections in themselves, rather than as part of her life/career story. A thing to do for a FA run, maybe. Right now, since finding how incomplete that list is after all (105 public collections listed on the website!), I'm going to pull it and find somewhere else for those links/citations to go. I'll put in a sentence about how her work is in a gazillion galleries under "legacy exhibitions" for now. -- asilvering (talk) 19:37, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- This feels like a fine solution for now. Agreed that expanding the article with a "Notable Collections" or "Notable Works" section would be most meaningful over the long run.--JennyHemlock (talk) 18:17, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Right now "In 1982, Mitchell became the first female American artist to have a solo exhibition at the Musee d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris." is standing alone and unreferenced Mujinga (talk) 13:59, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Done. -- asilvering (talk) 20:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Referencing is otherwise excellent, article is broad and sufficiently focused, neutral and stable Mujinga (talk) 14:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The Further reading section is quite large, not in itself a problem, especially if you wanted to go to featured article, when I suppose it would all or mostly need to be shifted into the text. But for GA purposes this is already broad enough. Mujinga (talk) 14:02, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think a lot of these are actually in the text already. A swap to sfn-style notes-and-bibliography would make that obvious, but I think if the article remains in this state (rather than switching to notes+bib) this setup is probably what's most helpful to readers who are coming here to find sources for their own research, so I'm inclined to leave those as they stand. @JennyHemlock, if you're inclined to try making this a Featured Article, you might want to reformat the referencing using Template:Sfn so it's consistent and easier to see what's going on. -- asilvering (talk) 19:20, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Oh yeah I see for example Albers and Livingston are already in the references. Per MOS:FURTHER the links in this section should normally be removed if they are already in the article. Mujinga (talk) 09:28, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - For me, it feels important for Further Reading to include top sources given they are hard to parse out of the long reference list (and this seems to be allowed per MOS:FURTHER, "The Further reading section...should normally not duplicate the content of the References section, unless the References section is too long for a reader to use as part of a general reading list.") Given that, I would be inclined to leave Further Reading as is if that is acceptable.--JennyHemlock (talk) 19:06, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Coming to the lead last, per MOS:LEADLENGTH 2 or 3 paragraphs summarising the sections in the article would be great. Right now we have 1.5 paragraphs so there's room for expansion. If you need a template, perhaps looking at Mary Beth Edelson could help but actually things are nearly there already. Mujinga (talk) 14:06, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I added more on her style. I hesitate to put more about exhibitions in there (which is most of what's missing) since I think that would get a bit info-dumpy for a lead. How's it look now? -- asilvering (talk) 20:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Hmm let's see what JennyHemlock thinks here. For me the lead could be expanded a bit more, maybe mentioning for example her retrospective. Mujinga (talk) 09:28, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - I added the retrospective and broke it into four short paragraphs. It feels like a good summary to me at this point.--JennyHemlock (talk) 18:17, 18 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Last comments[edit]

We are nearly there now, I'll put any last queries here for ease of finding.
First off the lead seems to have been added to but then returned to the previous 1.5 paragraphs? Mujinga (talk) 12:12, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Apologies, the edit to this section and a few other clean-up edits you flagged below seem to have been inadvertently overwritten. It's all restored and ready for final review.--JennyHemlock (talk) 19:52, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  - Ah great that's all done then, congrats on your first good article @JennyHemlock: and thanks for all the help with it @Asilvering: Mujinga (talk) 21:40, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    - Wonderful! Thank you, @Mujinga: for all of your notes and feedback to get it there, and thank you @Asilvering: for the collaboration!--JennyHemlock (talk) 00:20, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Congrats, @JennyHemlock! And thanks for taking on this review, @Mujinga! -- asilvering (talk) 03:37, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry not seeing the alts for pix? Mujinga (talk) 12:14, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"One outstanding question for pictures: Would it be useful to add an External Images link box" yeah why not, it can improve the article, but that won't stop me making it a good article when the other things are done since it's not a requirement Mujinga (talk) 12:15, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"Mid-career (France)" and "Later years and death (France)" still need work in that they can be pulled into paragprahs and made less of a list. For example currently in "Mid-career (France)" we have four too small paragraphs in a line starting In 1967 .. In 1968 ... In 1972 ... In 1976 Mujinga (talk) 12:18, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Forgot to reply on Further Reading - I understand the urge to highlight certain works and I'm ok with it, but I imagine someone will at some point come along and delete them as already being in the text. If you really wanted to highlight a text, then it could be mentioned in the article itself, then of course you'd need a citation for it. Mujinga (talk) 17:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted to add the sentence Her image is included in the iconic 1972 poster [[Some Living American Women Artists (collage) | Some Living American Women Artists]] by [[Mary Beth Edelson]]. <ref name="SAAM">{{cite web |title=Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper |url=https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/some-living-american-women-artistslast-supper-76377 |website=Smithsonian American Art Museum |access-date=21 January 2022}}</ref> but I could not figure our where it fit. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 18:43, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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.