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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Poor Yorick (talk | contribs) at 22:14, 28 February 2010 (→FARC commentary). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Søren Kierkegaard

Review commentary

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Notified: Poor Yorick, WikiProject Psychology, WikiProject Denmark, WikiProject Christianity, WikiProject Philosophy

I am nominating this featured article for review because it no longer meets the FA criteria. It has been three long years, and while FA has evolved, the article has not. The main issue is 2c), as parts of the article are entirely unreferenced, and most parts lack some referencing. Other issues include the lead not being too short, and even finishing off with a one-sentence paragraph (2a). The images lack alt-text, at one point the images sandwich the text and all the portraits have the eyes looking out of the article (they are wrongly aligned). Why there needs to be two shots of the same grave, I do not know, particularly when the one is of rather bad composition. The texts consist of eleven (unless i counted wrong) rather long quotes in two styles, most that add nothing to the understanding of the article, or merely seem to function as either decoration or an attempt to "educate" the reader through excessive use of primary sources. For instance the section "Kierkegaard and Christianity" consists almost entirely of a bulleted list of prose and quotes. There is a lot of overlinking, for instance Denmark is suddenly linked in the middle of the article, and Danish State Church is linked several times, even when they are very close. Concerning specific points in the text, I don't quite understand why I would confuse the two Schlegels. There is also incorrect use of italics in the "Kierkegaard and Christianity" section. The article seems to have an excessive number of external links, of varying quality. The four see-also links should be weaved into the article text, to provide context. The biography should be put in a table, and ref. 47 is incorrectly formatted. In the bibliography section, "P. Houe and Gordon D. Marino ed." is linked. Arsenikk (talk) 22:40, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ref 47 (Kierkegaard's Reception in Japan) Corrected
Merged one-sentence paragraph into larger paragraph
Bibliography "P. Houe and Gordon D. Marino ed." unlinked, made consistent
Pruned external links to 7, corrected links
See also links integrated into article
Added alt-text to images, except in infobox which already has a caption for alt images
removed duplicate image of grave
reduced number of quotation boxes and re-integrated into main text
expanded lead

Aside from referencing 2c and SK and Christianity part, which I will get to later, are there any other comments on the article? Poor Yorick (talk) 01:56, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Debulletized SK and Christianity.
Added references

-- Poor Yorick (talk) 11:06, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Please arrange the images so that the people look into the article. Just three comments on the images:

Issues addressed, Details filed in for images. Poor Yorick (talk) 11:06, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments, nice to see that there is enthusiasm to get the article up to standards, and that action was quickly taken to counter the comments. There are still many paragraphs and sentences without references, and these need to be filled in. I have gone slightly more viciously through the article and have some more comments:

  • The article says "Danish National Church", but the article refers to it as both the "Church of Denmark", the "Danish People's Church" and the "Danish State Church". Normally such institutions (particularly in Scandinavia) have an official translation of their name into English, and we should stick to it. Also, this institution is wikilinked several times.
-Will link to Danish National Church
-Done. Poor Yorick (talk) 06:28, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would have though that "Western Philosophers" (in the infobox) was not a proper noun and therefore should not be capitalized.
  • Under "early life", the article first talks about his father (in relation to his mother), but does not mention his father's name until the end of the paragraph.
  • Describing someone as a "fiercely intelligent man" sounds very subjective and I would like to have seen multiple sources support such a claim.
-It's the phrase used by Garff, but will look for other references that support the meaning of that claim
  • Ref 13 should be after the comma.
  • The sentence "Though five of his seven children died before he did, both Søren and his brother Peter Christian Kierkegaard, seven years his elder who later became bishop in Aalborg, outlived him." needs to be split up—there is too much to digest and it needs to be read twice to be understood.
  • I do not see the encyclopedic value of the quote about his father.
- One quote each for two of SK's most important influences, his father's death and the love for his ex-fiancee.
  • The article uses two different styles of blockquote—please stick to only one.
  • Copenhagen is suddenly linked in the section on Regine Olsen.
  • "Governor" in the way used here is not capitalized.
  • "On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates" is overlinked, as is "Johan Frederik Schlegel".
  • "Kierkegaard-Olsen relationship" should use an endash instead of a hyphen.
  • The quote about Regine seems a bit off topic. It seems unencyclopedic to use quotes in the life section.
- One quote each for two of SK's most important influences, his father and ex-fiancee.
  • I do not understand the capitalization in "The Rational is the Real and the Real is the Rational".
  • The image of Regine and the caricature should both be aligned to the right, so the faces and eyes look into the page.
  • In "On 22 December 1845, a young author of Kierkegaard's generation who studied at the University of Copenhagen at the same time as Kierkegaard", there should be a comma before "who".
-Rearranged noun location
  • I don't know if "ire" is a common enough term to be used on Wikipedia.
-It's still a valid English word
Perfectly good word in my opinion. I think it should stay. (Ice Explorer (talk) 17:36, 14 December 2009 (UTC))[reply]
  • In "In all, Kierkegaard wrote two small pieces in response to Møller", the "in all" should be redundant.
  • Are really the two responses worthy of an article? If they are, I would suggest creating at least a stub on them.
-Will do
  • The sentence "In a journal entry made on March 9, 1846, Kierkegaard makes a long, detailed explanation of his attack on Møller and The Corsair, and also explains that this attack made him rethink his strategy of indirect communication." should be in past tense, like the rest of the prose.
  • The sentence "It is important to realise that by Christendom Kierkegaard meant not Christianity itself, but rather the church and the applied religion of his society." need an extra comma. However, another issue is that it is not considered appropriate for us to say what is important and not, so try to use a more neutral phrase or just stating the fact.
  • The sentence "At Kierkegaard's funeral, his nephew Henrik Lund caused a disturbance by protesting that Kierkegaard was being buried by the official church, which he would never have approved, had he been alive, as he had broken from and denounced it." is a bit too long.

I've looked through the lead and "life", but lack of time at the moment forces me to return with feedback of the rest of the article later. Arsenikk (talk) 14:42, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much for the specific list, Arsenikk. I've addressed about half of these, leaving the more substantive editorial decisions and the ones I was unsure of for Poor Yorick.  Skomorokh  20:17, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Will look into some more. Poor Yorick (talk) 22:03, 10 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Red links

I created an article for Adolph Peter Adler and I'll work on some of the other red links. (Ice Explorer (talk) 17:14, 14 December 2009 (UTC))[reply]

Template:Infobox philosopher does not have alt text parameters, so we cannot add ALT for File:Kierkegaard.jpg and File:Kierkegaard sig.png. Corrected ALT-Text for the rest of the images. Poor Yorick (talk) 06:23, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for adding alt text. Template:Infobox philosopher does have alt text parameters now: I just added |signature_alt=, and it already had an (undocumented) |image_alt=, so you can add alt text for its two images now. The alt text for the other images is mostly good, but I'll comment on the problems I found:
  • For File:Manuscript philosophical fragments.png the alt text says "Philosophical Fragments" but the image says something else. Please transcribe what the image actually says ("Philosophiske Smuler ..."), rather than translating it into English; this is as per WP:ALT#Text and WP:ALT#Verifiability. (The translation is already in the caption anyway.) The alt text also says "No. 12" but the actual text is "Nr. 12 a"; please transcribe the original. I suggest transcribing the entire title rather than just some of it, and to spell out the mispelling and the correction.
  • For File:Søren Kierkegaard i Corsaren.jpg please remove the the word "Kierkegaard" from the alt text, as per WP:ALT#Verifiability and WP:ALT#Repetition.
  • For the alt text "Excerpt of three paragraphs of The Sickness Unto Death; written in Kierkegaard's handwriting." please keep the "three paragraphs" and "written" and "handwriting" but remove everything else, and replace it with a description of what's in the image (the removed stuff cannot be verified by a non-expert who is looking only at the image, as per WP:ALT#Verifiability).
  • Similarly, for File:Kierkegaard olavius.jpg please remove the phrases "Kierkegaard" (3 occurrences) and "by Christian Olavius", as per WP:ALT#Verifiability.
  • "Title Page" should be "Title page".
  • "Enten-Eller" should be "Enten – Eller" (spaced endash; I guess that's an endash, right?)
  • "SOREN KIERKEGAARD" should be "SØREN KIERKEGAARD" (two instances)
  • "the Danish National Church" should be removed as per WP:ALT#Verifiability.
Please let me strike my own comments after you've fixed the problem. And thanks again. Eubulides (talk) 06:54, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Done. Poor Yorick (talk) 08:26, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I struck the above comments. Almost done. Now for the recently-added text:
  • The alt text for the lead image should say a bit about what Kierkegaard looked like, in particular that hair that rises straight up about 8 cm, and also that he's a young man, the high forehead, and the triangular face. It should also say it's just a head-and-shoulders portrait. Please see WP:ALT#Portraits for guidance.
  • "of Kierkegaard by Niels Christian Kierkegaard" needs to be removed, as per WP:ALT#Verifiability.
  • You can remove "Kierkegaard's signature, which reads:". Or at least please remove the initial "Kierkegaard's" there, as it's redundant.
  • "A Building" should be "A building", and "A Statue" "A statue".
Eubulides (talk) 09:23, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
For the first point, I'm just using the template from Mary Bartelme in WP:ALT Portraits for the first image; probably shouldn't be estimating using precise measurements like 8 cm. Otherwise, Done. Poor Yorick (talk) 12:28, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What? we can't just say that his hair looks like Syndrome's? Anyway, thanks for doing all that; it looks good now. Eubulides (talk) 17:38, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

Featured article criterion concerns are referencing, lead, MOS. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:06, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Referencing, Lead, and MOS addressed in specific points made above. Please list additional items if any below. If there are no additional items, please close FARC. Poor Yorick (talk) 03:59, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: there is far too much uncited text still. As but one example (there are many) of text that needs citing,
  • Kierkegaard's vision of the world was that it was composed of an endless variety of subjective alternate realities, forcing one to jump and proclaim one's choice of a direct and immediately accessible reality, rather than conflationary versions commonly tethered.

There are also citation cleanup needs, which can be worked on once the article is fully cited. Also, incorrect use of WP:ITALICS throughout. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:12, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Would like assistance in determining which paragraphs need specific reference and are contentious sentences, otherwise as per WP:REF, we would be following General Reference, simplying "adding the citation at the end." Poor Yorick (talk) 09:19, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The article is using author-date APA style referencing, it would help to know exactly which paragraphs do not conform to APA style. Poor Yorick (talk) 09:19, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's using inline footnotes/citations not parenthetical ones. I was asking why they just go to a book without specifiying which of hte possibly hundreds of pages it is. YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 03:25, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In APA style inline referencing, you only need the author and date, not the page number, except when using direct quotations, which are already done in references such as #17, #43, and #44. I see #8 and #32 doesn't have any page numbers, I will fix those ones. Poor Yorick (talk) 06:33, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The article has been brought up to current Featured article criteria since its nomination in December by Arsenikk.

  • 1c has been addressed: statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, including contentious material about living persons, and for all direct quotations have been referenced and cited. This article is not about a living person and the biographies of Kierkegaard already support significant amounts of the material, as per WP:REF#General reference. The article is not subject to ongoing edit wars regarding challenged statements as per 1e.
  • 2a has been addressed: a single sentence paragraph for the lead has been expanded
  • 2c has been addressed: the article uses citations, footnotes and references in author-date APA style.
  • 3 has been addressed: images now have alt-text tags. Copyright status for all images have been confirmed to be Public Domain or other acceptable licenses in the US and countries which use the life of the author + 50 years or less.

Cheers, Poor Yorick (talk) 06:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • The referencing style is still erratic. Some split references are used that give "Author Year: Page" in the notes and complete information in the references section. Others give full information in both notes and references, but they are in different formats. Others give full information in the notes with nothing in the references. And still others give full information in the references section but nothing in the notes section. They need to be standardized to use one format (I personally perfer the first, with short refs in the notes and full refs in the references, but it's up to you). Books that are not used for in-line citations should be moved to a "further reading" section.
I'll look into that
  • Although I believe you are correct that true APA style referencing doesn't use page numbers, for an FA-status article on Wikipedia you need them. At least a page range (or sometimes a chapter, if it's short) is needed, so that readers know where to go in a book; this is especially true if it's a long book.
WP:FA? does not list the requirement that author-page must be used, not author-date as in APA style. APA is still an acceptable citation style as per WP:CITE. In APA style, page numbers are needed only for direct quotations.
  • What makes ref #35 (Lowrie, Walter) a reliable reference? Also, Lowrie is not the author. They used his work, but I don't think he actually wrote the page.
Corrected Lowrie ref with source from his actual book. Lowrie is reliable as he was one of the first scholars on Kierkegaard. That webpage was not.
  • What makes ref #53 (Søren Kierkegaard's Journal Commentary) a reliable reference? The author admits on his "about us" page that he is an amateur who is mainly self-taught. Same for #27, 66.
D. Anthony Storm is a tertiary source, as Mr. Storm uses secondary sources as well. He is not a fork of Wikipedia or based on any forks of wiki related sites. As per WP:Reliable: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable secondary sources. This means that while primary or tertiary sources can be used to support specific statements, the bulk of the article should rely on secondary sources." Mr. Storm is used three times only in this article and thus does not constitute the bulk of the article.
  • What makes ref #67 (Georg Brandes) a reliable reference?
Mr. Brandes is a well respected Danish scholar and one of the first scholars on Kierkegaard. The site is an acceptable tertiary source summarizing his life.
  • Not necessary, but have you considered splitting the informational notes out from the referential notes? This may make both easier to read and navigate, but it's up to you.
I'll look into that
  • I've added several fact tags, each accompanied by a hidden comment that explains my rationale.
Referenced those facts.
  • There is still unneeded italicization in the article, for example "most trusted confidant" in the Journals section.
Got it, let me know of other unneeded italicization.
  • I'm going to try to find some other philosphy/psychology type people to comment on this. I'm not a content expert, so I'm hoping to get someone in who really knows the subject to be able to pick out any problems that I don't find. I haven't done a check of the prose yet, so once the above are taken care of, that will still need to be done.
There are people checking prose and factual info such as Skomorokh and Laser Brain (Andy)

Overall a nice article, and it looks like you've put a lot of work into it, but still some effort needed before it is back to FA status. Dana boomer (talk) 00:06, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is already FA status, it just needs a few minor corrections. Cheers, Poor Yorick (talk) 22:14, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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