Wikipedia:Featured article review/Woody Guthrie/archive1

Woody Guthrie

Fails "well-written:" This was on the front page yesterday. I often read Wikipedia's featured article and they are usually quite good but I was rather shocked that this particular one was a featured article. The writing is slipshod, even sophomoric in many places. I left a comments on the talk page regarding a missing word in a sentence. Thereafter I decided to talk about the global issue of demotion and detailed multiple problems in just the first section following the lead. Thereafter I discovered this process. I will repeat what I said on the talk page (with some modifications) and expand.

• "who lived across from Guthrie and his family in Brooklyn in the 1940s"
  • Across from him how? Across the street? Across the hall? There is an indispensable word missing in this sentence. It can say she lived "nearby to" but it can't say "lived across from Guthrie" as if "across" is a specific thing in and of itself.

First section problems

• "Guthrie was born in Okemah, a small town in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, to Nora Belle Sherman and Charles Edward Guthrie."
  • Needs a date in relation: "Guthrie was born ON DATE in Okemah..."
• "...judging from the circumstances surrounding his death by drowning, suffered from the same hereditary disease."
  • Why? What is it about Huntingtons that makes it likely. What were these "circumstances". Why is the mother suspected in the preceding paragraph? It's all very insinuating and muddled and unilluminating. Possibly ywhat's needed is something like Guthries' mother suffered from Huntington's disease which is know to cause _______. Scholar/in the NAME OF WORK, it is speculated that the multiple coincidental fires were the result of ________."
• "According to one story, Guthrie made friends with an African-American blues harmonica player named "George", whom he would watch play at the man's shoe shine booth. Before long, Guthrie bought his own harmonica and began playing along. But in another interview 14 years later, Guthrie claimed that he learned how to play harmonica from a boyhood friend, John Woods, and that his earlier story was false."
  • "One story" is poor; the source of this "story" should be attributed in text; the "story" is referred to later in the paragraph by relation to "another interview", but we never knew the earlier "story" was an "interview"
• "He seemed to have a natural affinity for music and easily learned to "play by ear". He began to use his musical skills around town, playing a song for a sandwich or coins."
  • "Seemed" is waffling; "began to use" should be rethought if you aren't going to provide a time period in close proximity; "a song for a sandwich or coins" is awkward.
• "Eventually, Guthrie's father sent for his son to come to Texas where little would change for the now-aspiring musician."
  • "Eventually" sounds like a stand in for not having a date; "now-aspiring musician" should never be said without a date or age provided.
• Guthrie, now 18..."
  • Poor. "Now 18", like the previous sentence, invokes a specific time period; some event just told which fixes his exact or general age at which he is "now". Yet we donlt know his age at all. "Now" attaches to nothing. It should say "at 18" or "by 18" or something similar.
    • It's not just these specific errors that need to be addressed. The section doesn't flow well. We aren't looking for error free prose; we're looking for compelling prose, and this section is not that.

Next section:

• "Robbin, who became Guthrie's political mentor, introduced Guthrie to Socialists and Communists in Southern California" and later "Guthrie requested to write a column for the Communist newspaper"
  • Why are Socialists and Communists/Communist capitalized?
• "...with Germany in 1939 KFVD radio owners did not..."
  • There probably should be a comma after 1939 as a a natural break point, and it's "KFVD's owners" or possibly "KFVD radio's owners", though that does not really work for me because radio is not part of the name of the entity.
• "the wanderlusting Guthrie"
  • Wanderlust is a noun. I know what is meant but the construction is outré.

I'm not going to go through the whole article but it is a long way from brilliant prose.—141.155.159.210 (talk) 11:55, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

NOTE: This article appeared on the main page January 10, 2009. I do not know where the "yesterday" factors in here. --Moni3 (talk) 12:14, 3 June 2009 (UTC)