Talk:Fanny Imlay

message: It appears there are only two sides to this discussion: this article sucks and this article is fine no changes needed. We can't help but overstate our points in our anonymity (you buttholes), but all this communication is keeping people from communicating.
* FAC isn't perfect. It's made up of Wikipedians who cannot help but err. Wikipedia's standards change. Sometimes quickly. Because an article passed several years ago does not ensure that the same standards by which it passed would qualify the article today.
* I think folks are missing the point of this discussion. There's no reason to jump to RfD or FAR. There seem to be legitimate concerns that the article does not make clear how Fanny Imlay was important. If the article or parts of the article need to be rewritten to make this clearer, those who are participating here should offer suggestions, and by all means, help with reading and rewriting. Demanding one person do it is not a good approach. This is a collaborative encyclopedia.  
* I've had to rewrite leads because people opposed something in them or the lead in its entirety, for various reasons. To make this easier, I made bullet points in talk page discussions to state the barest essentials of what should be covered in the lead. Perhaps that should be done for this article. Although I'm well aware that sources dictate what should be covered and what points are important in an article, how that information is summarized and presented to readers is the topic for this discussion. --Moni3 (talk) 22:04, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Rather more fundamentally, the discussion (such as it is) is in fact not about quality but about notability.  Here there are indeed only two sides: the subject of this article is notable, or she isn't.  The question of quality is quite different.  Yes, it's a little odd that people should be questioning the notability of an article that has gone through the scrutiny of the FA process, but so be it.  --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 22:23, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I gather from this discussion that readers are genuinely confused as to why Imlay deserves her own article. If the article itself doesn't make that apparent, it should. jbmurray, I don't think this is about notability. Clearly Imlay has sourced material written about her, but the summary of that material in the way it is presented to readers isn't answering the fundamental question of why Imlay deserves her own article. If we just present confused readers here on the talk page with a link to the notability guidelines, that doesn't solve the primary issue of the lack of clarity in the article. It doesn't appear to be a random main page day crank simply trying to be disruptive and trolling. --Moni3 (talk) 22:53, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree a sentence or two added to the one sentence first para to explain why there is so much written about her should deal with the concerns or puzzlement that a number of readers have had. Really it just has to list the people she grew up among and say something about the importance of the circle. Johnbod (talk) 23:48, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

text: Sage advice, Moni. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 01:40, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

text: No, more like "page not looked at before typing":
Daniel Case (talk) 17:04, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

text: While I agree with Daniel that google hits are not the arbiter of notability, I note that another issue is that she is also known as "Fanny Godwin" and "Fanny Wollstonecraft". Googling those names in quotes gets about 15K g-hits each (though I would imagine some are duplicates as the web page lists more than one name). Ruhrfisch  ><>°° 17:15, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Break

message: Although Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay lived together happily for brief periods before and after the birth of Fanny, Imlay left Wollstonecraft in France in the midst of the French Revolution.
:This is the second sentence in the article, and the first time Imlay is used without a first name. In this case, Imlay refers to Gilbert Imlay, not Fanny Imlay, the subject of the article. I think that's going to make readers stumble, although I'm not sure exactly how to fix it. Any thoughts? Zagalejo^^^ 04:52, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Put 'Gilbert' instead of 'Imlay'? 110.32.140.182 (talk) 10:10, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: That's what I was leaning towards, but I think some would consider that too informal. Zagalejo^^^ 23:24, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Informal or not, its the only solution to avoid unecessary confusion. Dimadick (talk) 06:58, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changed to "he". As Gilbert is the only male yet named in the article, this will do fine. Johnbod (talk) 14:11, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Any way to reword this sentence? 

message: Since my chief complaint has been lost in the discussion of notability (or lack thereof), I'm going to break it out here: Perusing the daily Featured Article has been part of my daily routine for some time. Some of the featured articles have not particularly interested me, but until now, none has ever left me scratching my head over why the article was noteworthy.
I'm not going to argue that this is because the subject was not, in fact, notable. I'm going to argue that the header does a terrible job of explaining, in the very first paragraph or two, why Fanny Imlay was notable. The header rambles all over the place without managing to answer that fairly important question. --Yaush (talk) 16:40, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Just to clarify what you mean, I think you mean "lead" when you write "header". On Wikipedia the lead is the first section and is supposed to be a summary of the whole article - see WP:LEAD. A header is the descriptive phrase for each section or subsection after the lead (so "Very weak header" is the header here - see WP:HEAD). Ruhrfisch  ><>°° 17:12, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  All of which may be true -- and I'll correct my terminology in the future -- but it doesn't address the problem of a very weak lead. --Yaush (talk) 18:12, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yaush, I agree. Sometimes things get through the Featured Article approval process. Seems like maybe some renewed attention to the lead is in order. It's unquestionably a high quality article, but the Featured Article criteria say the article should have "…a concise lead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in the subsequent sections" -- and I think this one could use some work. For those who have worked on the article -- what would you say are the most compelling, important aspects of Imlay's life, that should be summarized in the lead? Perhaps we can improve it to help new readers more readily get a sense of her historic significance? -Pete (talk) 05:09, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

text: I'd normally just be bold and add to the lead, but this is a subject with which I'm not terribly familiar. However, would inserting the sentence "Fanny was noted for her unrequited love with, and inspiration of, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and resultant suicide." just after the first in the lead paragaph help clear things up? Boom, there's an establishment of notability (and a little lurid interest, hopefully) to the reader in the 2nd sentence of the article. Tthaas (talk) 12:48, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Just so, Tthaas. Be bold and put it in. --Yaush (talk) 13:52, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I've boldly added "She grew up in the unsettled and stressful environment of a family that included prominent figures from English radicalism and Romanticism and has subsequently been the subject of intense academic and popular interest. This has included Fanny, although by the time of her suicide at the age of 22 she had not herself achieved anything of note." - which I think is better, though for sure not perfect. Johnbod (talk) 14:13, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks - what about adding a sentence to the end of the last paragraph, something like "Although her family did not claim her body, Imlay was the subject of Janet Todd's 2007 biography Death & the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle. Ruhrfisch  ><>°° 18:44, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I've had a look at that book and I don't think it is a "biography" at all,  unless you would call Barbara Cartland a biographer, too. Eregli bob (talk) 04:20, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Huh?  Janet Todd is rather a different kind of author from Barbara Cartland.  --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:02, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Very weak header 

message: I am reading Janet Todd's Death and the Maidens and it mentioned that Fanny had smallpox as a very small child, and subsequently had chickenpox and scratched her face, so she had pretty noticable pox / scarring (pp. 22, 47). I think this should probably be mentioned in the article, but wanted to see what others thought. Ruhrfisch  ><>°° 02:10, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Unless anyone objects I will add this in the next day or so (just a sentence early in the article, since she had smallpox in early childhood). Ruhrfisch  ><>°° 03:19, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not sure where to put the smallpox bit (as it seems like it would interrupt the current narrative flow in either the infancy or Childhood sections). One problem is that Todd's Death and the Maidens (which I read) does not say when exactly Fanny had smallpox, but I thought of adding it to this sentence: Three-year-old Fanny was unofficially adopted by her stepfather and given the name of Godwin.
so it would read Three-year-old Fanny, who had been scarred from smallpox, was unofficially adopted by her stepfather and given the name of Godwin. (add ref too)
Feedback? Ruhrfisch  ><>°° 15:19, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Smallpox 

message: Having read Janet Todd's Death and the Maidens (the primary source for this article), I have two suggested tweaks.
1) Add this quote by William Godwin (quoted on page xi in Todd) in a blue background quote box (like the two other boxes already in the article) towards the end of the article, probably in the Suicide and aftermath section. Godwin essentially adopted Fanny after her mother died and she called him Papa. Todd's book makes clear how torn she was between Godwin's hosuehold (where she lived), and the Shelley household (with her half sister Mary and stepsister Claire). 
2) Tweak the lead. Todd's book and the rest of the article are very careful about presenting the facts as known separate from speculation - it is likely that Fanny "was in love with" Shelley, but no one knows for sure now. Todd's book does not say so and the article only says In 1814, Shelley spent a considerable amount of time at the Godwins' and he and Imlay may have fallen in love. But the lead flatly states "Fanny was in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley". I think the sentence after this is too vague and would be better with specifics. The current first paragraph of the lead ends as follows:
:Fanny was in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley, who wrote a poem on her death. She grew up in the unsettled and stressful environment of a family that included prominent figures from English radicalism and Romanticism and has subsequently been the subject of intense academic and popular interest. This has included Fanny, although by the time of her suicide at the age of 22 she had not herself achieved anything of note. 
How about something like 
:Fanny's mother wrote about her frequently in her later works, and Percy Bysshe Shelley composed a poem on her death. Fanny grew up in the household of Radical philosopher William Godwin, and her half-sister Mary later wrote Frankenstein and married Shelley, a leading Romantic poet. The Godwin and Shelley families have been the subject of intense academic and popular interest, which includes Fanny; although by the time of her suicide at the age of 22 she had not achieved anything of note.
Ruhrfisch  ><>°° 05:18, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Finally made the changes above, Ruhrfisch  ><>°° 02:58, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested tweaks 

message: Why did it take four years from the time it was promoted in 2008 (when standards were probably different) to appearing on the MP in 2012? Were any other reviews done during this period? Froggerlaura ribbit 02:38, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: There are a lot of FAs that have not been on the Main Page, some of them for an even longer time than since 2008. If I may ask, how exactly do you feel this no longer meets the FA criteria (which are at WP:WIAFA)? Ruhrfisch  ><>°° 03:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

text: Indeed. Standards were similar to now by 2008, and the main author here was one of the editors who played a significant part in driving them up. Johnbod (talk) 11:55, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Four years?