Talk:Agrippa (A Book of the Dead)/GA1

GA Review

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Hi, I will be reviewing Agrippa (a book of the dead) for GA and will be adding comments below. It is an extremely interesting article. Initially, I saw the following issues:

• The lead should contain some timeframe or dates of release to orient the reader.
• Perhaps you could rework the following sentence so that two quote plus parentheses are not adjacent: "The impetus for the initiative was the suggestion of Begos, a publisher of museum-quality manuscripts motivated by disregard for the commercialism of the art world,[4] that he and Ashbaugh (who had a "heavy art-world resume"[5]) "put out an art book on computer that vanishes".[6]"
• The section Origin has only three sentences in it, yet it has three references to ref 6 and two each to ref 2 and ref 5. I think that is too many for three sentences, especially repeating that same references. Maybe you could reword it so the references would not have to be repeated.
• You say "supposedly self-devouring floppy-disk intended to display the text only once, then eat itself." However, in the next sentence you assume it self-destroys.
• "...he had to send two copies to the United States Library of Congress, who, in order to classify it had to read it, and to read it, necessarily had to destroy it." - he had to to send two copies to the United States Library of Congress, who had to read it in order to classify it, and by reading it would destroy it. - or some wording you prefer. (so there are not so many commas in the sentence)
• You say "supposedly self-devouring floppy-disk intended to display the text only once, then eat itself." However, in the next sentence you assume it self destroys.
• "... the diskettes were never actually "hacked"; instead the poem was manually transcribed from a surreptitious videotape of a public showing in Manhattan in December 1992..." - I am not understanding the process here. It originated as a videotape? "Since Gibson did not use email at the time, fans sent copies of the pirated text to his fax machine." As you describe it below, it is difficult to envision how it originated as a videotape that was then transcribed..
• "In this sense, it instantiates the ephemerality of all text, print and hyper-." - Perhaps you could reword so the sentence does not end in a hyphen.
• Wording seems unnecessarily obscure. - "instantiates" - concrete representation? "ephemerality" - ephemeral nature? or wording you like
• C-quote has been depreciated for blockquotes. MoS: "Block quotes can be enclosed between a pair of <blockquote>...</blockquote> HTML tags, or {{quotation}} or {{quote}} can be used."
• "The poem also contains a motif of "the mechanism", described as "Forever / Dividing that from this,"[19] and which takes the form of the camera—the brand name of which provides the title for the poem—or the ancient gun that misfires in the speaker's hands." - I am not understanding the connect between the camera "or the ancient gun that misfires in the speaker's hands." - Perhaps you need to explain more fully what is happening here.
• " Shooting the gun is "Like the first time you put your mouth / on a woman". - is Like capitalized in the quote? - if so, then - Shooting the gun is "[l]ike the first time you..."
• "The poem is, then, about not just memory, but how we form memories from subjective experience, and how those memories compare to mechanically-reproduced recordings." - don't need "then" - This could benefit from being a new paragraph.
• 'the mechanism,' - not sure why this is in single quotes - if there is a reason, it should be 'the mechanism', - comma not in the quotes.
• "In so much as memories constitute our identities, 'the mechanism,' strongly associated with recording in this poem, also represents the destruction of ourselves via recordings that can replace our subjective experience, hence both cameras and guns are part of the same mechanism, dividing that (memory, identity, life) from this (recordings, anonymity, death)." - this is a run-on sentence. - To the degree menories constitute a person's identity (which is the mechanism associated with composing the poem), memory (?) also represents the destruction ??? - This needs to be in shorter sentences and explained more clearly. I do not understand it.
• "sigil" - this is an obscure word than needs explaining. It would be better if the whole article were written more clearly, with accessible wording for the general reader.

• I may have more comments to add as I read through it more. This is a fascinating article and you have done a very good job. The references look good. (I will look through them more closely.) However, the article would benefit from shorter sentences and clearer wording. Also, perhaps reducing the quotations would help or, at least, explain in your own words more openly what they mean. The article is a difficult read for the general reader. —Mattisse (Talk) 22:15, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Other comments

Here are my suggestions for improvement (some of these things are just minor spelling corrections and whatnot; I just wrote them here to keep track as I was reading):

1. Before I get into the nitpicky stuff I just want to say up front, this article is extremely well-sourced! The inline citations are excellent and the footnotes formatted clearly.
2. The lead-in confused me a bit by saying "Agrippa is an artist's book" and then "the work is a 300-line poem embedded in an artist's book"...which is it? I may be understanding this wrong, but my suggestion for rewording would be "The work consists of a 300-line semi-autobiographical electronic poem by Gibson embedded within an artist's book by Ashbaugh" or something like that, to remove some of the ambiguity.
3. "meditation on time, memory and family" in lead-in sounds very lit-class.... the first sentence of Origin strikes me as having a similar problem. That tone seems to go away, though, for the rest of the article, so no major overhaul is needed, just rephrasing of those little bits.
4. Tense in lead-in: should be present (ie, "Gibson's text focused" --> "Gibson's text focuses")
5. Origin: "impetus for the initiative" slightly redundant
6. Suggest merging Origin and Release sections into one section (maybe titled Production or something like that...could have Origin and Release as subsections if you want to compromise).
7. Content and editions: "described by Peter Schwenger as..." in the beginning of this section should probably be in the Critical reception or Theme section....it doesn't really describe the actual release of the book. (It sounds great in an essay or something but, like the phrase I mentioned in the lead-in, seems a little too literature-y for a Wikipedia article...to me at least).
8. "42-lines each" --> "42 lines each"
9. "Finally, the final 60 pages of the book were fused together..." suggest rmv first "finally"
10. Second paragraph of that section: I think you should describe the small edition before you mention its price. So you could either copy and paste the stuff about the small edition into the previous paragraph (or a new paragraph before the info on prices), or you could divide up the section on prices (so that the section would read like "The deluxe edition had bla bla bla and cost X. The small edition had bla bla bla and cost Y.") This is just because when I was reading along and got to the part mentioning the price of the small edition, my first reaction was "small edition? what's that?"
11. on a related note: What is the bronze-boxed edition?
12. Themes section:"In this sense, it instantiates the ephemerality of all text..." to be frank, I have no idea what that means. It might be Schwenger's wording, but it would be helpful if someone could rephrase it in layman's terms.
13. The next sentence (after ref #17) doesn't have any ref given but seems to be doing some heavy analysis...are you sure this isn't OR?
14. Same thing with sentence beginning "It is also the agent of life and death," and final two sentences of the section.
15. "In so much as" --> "Insomuch as"
16. In Critical reception section, "extremely influential" and "fierce controversy" do not sound NPOV to me.

That said, my recommendation is definitely pass. I listed a lot of little things that need to be fixed, but I don't think any of them are enough to bar this article from GA, and they are all things that can be fixed very quickly and easily (heck, I would do them myself if it weren't for the fact that some of the things I don't totally understand and am afraid of adding incorrect information). This list here isn't meant to bar you from getting GA (while I am not the one who will ultimately be deciding, I am at least encouraging the real reviewer to pass the article), but rather just as things I noticed that can be improved. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 02:49, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Just looked through Mattisse's comments, and I do agree that the article would benefit from clearer wording understandable from a non-specialist audience (if you didn't already get that from my comments saying that I didn't understand some things). How serious an issue that is, I will leave up to Matisse to decide.—Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 03:23, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Let me know when you have addressed my comments. Meanwhile, I have put the article on hold. —Mattisse (Talk) 22:09, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks ever so much for both your comments on the article; it's been a while since I encountered this level of GA-scrutiny, and it is very welcome indeed. A note of clarification: this article is a hopdgepodge of disparate sources laced over the work of the original author, so inconsistencies in tone and veracity should be expected. I've tried to smooth them out and introduce some better flow, hopefully it will work out. the skomorokh 20:06, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Further comments

• Great job! It is a wonderful article. Just a few more nitpicks:
• canon, char, motif and Rives all go to disambiguation pages. The char page actually has a definition (disambig pages aren't supposed to have definitions). Maybe charring will work?
• I notice that you use British spelling. Is the article American, Canadian? Also, are the dollars American or Canadian? There is a US$ for US. I don't know what the Canadian equivalent is.

Otherwise, everything looks ready for GA. —Mattisse (Talk) 20:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Redirects to disambiguation pages fixed, all prices American, nothing Canadian in sight. According to Wikipedia's delightful WP:ENGVAR style guide, the use of British English is my privelege as contributor of most of the text (unless someone contends that the subject is uber-American). the skomorokh 20:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

FinalGA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): Excellent prose b (MoS): No obvious MoS errors.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): Well referenced b (citations to reliable sources): Sources are reliable c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars etc.:

6. 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):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

A wonderful article. Congradulations! —Mattisse (Talk) 22:35, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. It's been a pleasure to have such a diligent, responsive and interested reviewer. the skomorokh 16:20, 11 October 2008 (UTC)