Maybe someone can help me understand where I'm going astray here.
I wrote an article about one of my favorite comic book artists of the 1940s, a woman named Lily Renée. I first posted it to the Women in Comics wikia I run (http://womenincomics.wikia.com/http://womenincomics.wikia.com/wiki/Lily_Ren%C3%A9e) before deciding it was good and notable enough to put on Wikipedia proper ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Ren%C3%A9e)
I went to check on it recently and found it has been flagged with this notice:
"This article is written like a personal reflection or essay rather than an encyclopedic description of the subject. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style."
Now, I'm the first to admit I probably could have cited it better, though all the information I wrote came from the two interviews I did cite. But I'm really not seeing how it is "written like a personal reflection or essay", as they define it, i.e. it has no primary research, she is not a "personal invention", it does not state my "feelings" on the topic, nor is it a "discussion forum". (viz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#PUBLISHER)
It IS however written in "summary" style, and uses proper formal language (viz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Encyclopedic_style#Information_style_... )
Do you think whoever flagged it really meant it just needs to be cited better, or is there something I'm not seeing?
Thanks, Alexa
Do you think whoever flagged it really meant it just needs to be cited better, or is there something I'm not seeing?
Thanks, Alexa
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I think they used the wrong template ... {{story}} would be more appropriate for prose like this:
“Mrs. Kealy, however, seemed to think that by bringing her over, they were getting an unpaid servant.”
“After war officially broke out, about a month later, Mrs. Kealy pointed out that she didn't even know if her parents were even alive anymore.”
The first one uses “however”, which we used to counsel people to avoid (at, what else [[WP:AVOID]]). The second uses a contraction in something that is neither a possessive nor quoted matter.
While the text isn’t too problematic to me, it does need to be made drier and more encyclopedic. I would rewrite the first sentence as “Mrs. Kealy believed she would work for the family as a household servant” (There also needs to be a footnote after that graf). The rest I leave to you to edit, although if you want help do feel free to ask.
(Years ago, in my early days, I made a similar mistake of writing prose that was a bit too novelistic: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Coke&oldid=18530528, (see the History section) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:New_Coke#Reads_too_much_like_prose).
Daniel Case
I'd say, if anything, it's mostly the "Early life" section. The Wikipedia 'house style', if you can call it that, is a fairly dry just-the-facts-ma'am method of relating events. "Mrs. Kealy, however, seemed to think that by bringing her over, they were getting an unpaid servant" is an example of a sentence most long-term Wikipedia editors would be uncomfortable with, as its more storytelling than relating encyclopedic information. There's a few more bits, but ultimately its a pretty minor problem. Over time other editors will probably remove most of the biographical color and your article will blend in fine.
Nathan