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Revision as of 22:01, 10 August 2007 editPmanderson (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers62,752 edits re← Previous edit Revision as of 10:38, 14 August 2007 edit undoTony1 (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Template editors275,859 edits []: MOS breachNext edit →
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*:: ] is not a current standard and the page is being retained for historical reasons only. Please read ], ], ]. ] 11:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC) *:: ] is not a current standard and the page is being retained for historical reasons only. Please read ], ], ]. ] 11:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
*:::I watched the implosion of ] and ] at close hand. Large parts of them were controversial and widely deprecated; large parts of them were never disputed. This is one of the latter; it should be salvaged. If ] doesn't say anything about using the methods of citing usual in a given field of scholarship, it really ought to. ] <small>]</small> 22:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC) *:::I watched the implosion of ] and ] at close hand. Large parts of them were controversial and widely deprecated; large parts of them were never disputed. This is one of the latter; it should be salvaged. If ] doesn't say anything about using the methods of citing usual in a given field of scholarship, it really ought to. ] <small>]</small> 22:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

*'''Further comment'''—It's much improved, but there's a remaining issue: the breach of MOS in the persistent use of a single closing digit for page ranges in the notes/references. It can't pass until these are fixed. ] 10:38, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Revision as of 10:38, 14 August 2007

Orion (mythology)

Self nomination. I took this article in hand, after several complaints on the talk page that previous versions were pushing one interpretation of Greek mythology; but the result seems to be largely stable. I have avoided sythesizing a narrative out of the several different tellings of this myth in antiquity. It would be WP:SYNTH to assert that all the somewhat inconsistent authors are incomplete versions of some ur-story. I have also tried to avoid giving any undue weight to any of the modern interpretations of Greek mythology.

This has been to Peer Review, and the chief comment was "What influence has this myth had, aside from being a source for mythographers?" The answer seems to be: Not much. I have included such references to Orion, the myth as opposed to the constellation, in modern culture as I can find. Project Orion is not one; Ted Taylor took the name out of the sky at random.

I believe this complies with WP:MOS on such points of detail as the placement of footnotes. Please feel free to correct any oversights in such matters yourselves. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:33, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Fixes needed - I'm a bit busy but just on a quick look there are some preliminary housekeeping issues - refs need ISBNs and some other info such as publisher an location where available - putting in cite format would be really helpful. I'd also make that a subsection of footnotes above. Also, many paragraphs are short and the prose a bit choppy. I'll be back in a day or two but there's plenty to get started on. These things need addressing before a closer look. If not done in 2-3 days I'll be happy to chip in. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
PS: The lead should summarise the article - as is it meanders a bit and could do with reorganizing
Doubtless I am too familiar with it; it seems to me to fit the article well. Could you do a draft of what you have in mind? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:33, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
An excellent, well-referenced article. This should certainly be the template for other entries on figures from classical mythology. The complete referencing of the multipe and conflicting ancient accounts is certainly a great improvement on the usual attempt by encyclopedia to streamline these stories. To completely round off the article a brief section on the appearance of Orion in classical art would be perfect -- his appearance or lack thereof. The LIMC should have some information on this topic (a site/book linked to on the page. --Theranos 10:02, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
An excellent suggestion, which I have now followed; unfortunately LIMC does not return anything; neither does Perseus Project, here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't think that there is any better encyclopedic article on Orion; thus I have no other choice but to support this well-researched and well-worked article, despite my reservations. And my reservations - proposals for improvement at the same time - are mainly concentrated on the following issues:
  • Prose: sometimes I get the impression it gets choppy and a bit seamless. Especially the last paragraphs in "Variants", the whole "Relationships", and the first half of "Modern Interpretations" are IMO a bit problematic: too short sentences not well inter-connected. See also paragraphs like this one: "An inscription cataloged by epigraphist Louis Robert shows that the veneration of Orion at Tanagra extended well into Roman times. Hyria (Orion's purported birthplace) lay in the territory of Tanagra. Orion could be a considered "national hero" to the region, and he may have been the divine champion of the Boeotians to which an Athenian epigram attributed their defeat at the Battle of Coronea. " The sentence "Hyria (Orion's purported birthplace) lay in the territory of Tanagra." is in the middle of nowhere. In general I agree with the "dry" comment of Anomie in the peer-review, and I think you should make the flow of the prose a bit "smoother".
  • "There are, as often, numerous variants in other authors; most of these are incidental mentions in poems and scholiasts. Vergil, for instance, shows Orion, as a giant, not walking on the Aegean, but wading through it." In cases like this one I feel that the citation would be better placed at the end of the sentence.
  • Something I may not have got correctly. We have two versions of his death: 1) Artemis hit and killed him. 2) Earth created the Scorpion; and then what? I may imagine what happened but ... And it is Scorpio or Scorpion?
  • Since Orion (constellation) is linked within the text (in the lead), do you really need the "See also" section?
  • I did not go in detail through the "Notes" and "References", and, therefore, I cannot comment on any possible inconsistencies with MoS.--Yannismarou 14:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose The article needs a copyedit by a third-party. These are some examples of prose problems:
  • "It also has different death story" - missing "a"?
  • "Several sources tell different stories of how Artemis killed Orion, either with her arrows, or by producing the Scorpion." I think "several" should be replaced by "other"
  • "Ancient poets differed greatly on who it was that Aesculapius brought back from the dead; for which Zeus killed him with a lightning bolt." - the semi-colon should be a comma. Who did Zeus kill: Aesculapius or the person brought back from the dead?
  • "In the Odyssey, Ulysses sees him hunting in the Underworld, a great slayer of animals, with a bronze club; but he is also mentioned as a constellation, as the lover of the Goddess Dawn - slain by Artemis; and as the most handsome of the earthborn." - was the Underworld a great slayer of animals? The semi-colon before "but" should be a comma. The comma after "constellation" should be a semi-colon. The hyphen should either be a spaced en dash or an unspaced em dash.
    • This is the same delusion as below that equal main clauses, in the presence of semicolons, can be separated by commas. There should be a comma after Artemis; anyone who wishes to play with hyphens is free to do so. and i've changed the punctuating nyphen. 02:56, 3 August 2007 (UTC) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:03, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
  • "Hyginus also connects him with several constellations"– the "also" is redundant
  • "until Zeus intervened and raised the whole lot to the stars" - "the whole lot" isn't encyclopedic
  • "the story that he chases the Pleiades themselves goes back to the Works and Days." - "that" should be replaced by "in which". Who is "he"? "Goes back to" isn't encyclopedic. "Themselves" is redundant.
  • "sources vary in what they include; but the major incidents" - the semi-colon should be a comma
    • This is a compound sentence; the second half includes not only commas, but semicolons; dividing with a comma would be a hierarchy error. Compare Fowler's Modern English Usage "Stops", §Semi-colons. But it may be that the sentence should be divided. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
  • PDF sources need to be labelled.
  • Page ranges in the footnotes need en dashes rather than hyphens. Epbr123 10:31, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Some of these are valuable; and the article does need a copyedit. I disagree on others; in general, schoolmarm English is a bug, not a feature. On still others, Epbr123 would cut information in his copy edit; in particular, there are multiple sources which say that Artemis killed Orion, more numerous than those which say, like Hesiod, that Gaea did. "Other sources tell different stories of how Artemis killed Orion" would lose this implication. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
    • As often above, Epbr123 has found points where the prose genuinely needs consideration. It would be more helpful if he had identified the problems correctly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm just letting you know that you should never strike through other users' comments. Thanks. Epbr123 11:24, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
Sorry. Feel free to unstrike; this was only a way of marking which comments are now moot, since they deal with particular pieces of the text which have been changed. Other comments are welcome. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:49, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose—1a and MOS. Here are a few of the many issues. Please don't just fix these. Someone new should run through the whole text (it's worth it—the article has merit, but fails thus far).
    • "fairly obscure"—Like "quite" and "very", "fairly" is unencyclopedically vague.
    • "the margins of ancient poets"—what, around their waists?
    • Why the blue background for Note 2? I hope that "dubious" really is authoritatively justified in this source.
    • Notes: "572-7" and many other instances—Read MOS on number ranges (en dash and double closing digit. required). Same for References.
    • "most of the stories of him are only recorded in incidental allusions"—No, position "only" as far to the right as possible: this is ambiguous.
    • "Corinna sang of Orion conquering and naming all the land of the dawn."—Is this a whole paragraph? There are other similarly stubby paras.
    • MOS breach concerning quotation italics.
  • MOS breach concerning ranges (en dash).
  • Support -- Excellent and enlightening. Nothing that would improve the article is immediately obvious to me. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:52, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: This article has 82 footnotes, in small font. Anyone who can see the difference between a hyphen and an ndash, at that scale, and feels the labor of changing them the most effective contribution they can make to WP, or to this article, should feel free to do so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:25, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

In other news, I've asked several places for a copyeditor. If they agree with Epbr123 in wanting a comma splice, or Tony1 in his desire to call a source 40% obscure, and to separate "only" from the word it modifies, so be it; English is established by consensus. For my part, I am relieved that it is such details we are discussing, instead of Yannismarou's substantive qualms, which I hope I have answered. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:40, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment Please check the Footnotes for appropriateness, completeness and format. Example: "Another mythographer, Liberalis, tells of Menippe and Metioche, daughters of Orion, who sacrificed themselves for their country's good and were transformed into comets." The footnote to this sentence leads to a wikilink of an article on Antoninus Liberalis plus a page number. I do not see a work by Antoninus Liberalis under References. Thank you. Mattisse 14:10, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
    This is the quite standard method of citing poems and classical texts, by book and chapter, paragraph, or line; one example of it is cited in WP:ATTFAQ. I have added the (redundant) information that the title of Liberalis' work is the Metamorphoses and that 25 is a section number; Liberalis' work is the only thing he wrote, and is a single book. When, as usual, the division is standard across editions, it is both customary and preferable to citing the page of a specific edition, which is useless to anyone who does not have access to that edition.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:03, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
    WP:ATTFAQ is not a current standard and the page is being retained for historical reasons only. Please read WP:CITE, WP:V, WP:RS. Mattisse 11:24, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
    I watched the implosion of WP:ATT and WP:ATTFAQ at close hand. Large parts of them were controversial and widely deprecated; large parts of them were never disputed. This is one of the latter; it should be salvaged. If WP:CITE doesn't say anything about using the methods of citing usual in a given field of scholarship, it really ought to. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Further comment—It's much improved, but there's a remaining issue: the breach of MOS in the persistent use of a single closing digit for page ranges in the notes/references. It can't pass until these are fixed. Tony 10:38, 14 August 2007 (UTC)