Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Giants2008 23:08, 13 February 2012 [1].

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

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Nominator(s): PresN 23:38, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hey all, I'm back with another science fiction award list. Having finished up the Hugo Awards a few months back, I now take a step sideways to the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, an award that is presented with the Hugos, voted on in the same ballot as the Hugos, but is not actually a Hugo Award. In that vein, I use the same format as the Hugo lists, so it's the same long white-and-blue table you've seen so many times before. Everything about the award is in this list, as it's not as well-known as the Hugos so it can't support a regular article on top of the list. Let me know what you think! --PresN 23:38, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved comments from The Rambling Man (talk) 14:37, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • No images? It would certainly brighten the page up if we had a few images of some of the winners?
  • "47 writers " avoid starting sentences with a number.

The Rambling Man (talk) 15:02, 8 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Fixed the sentence; I'll see what I can do about images. --PresN 22:39, 9 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Added one. --PresN 01:21, 18 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Quick comments –

  • Ref 2 has a pp. for a single-page cite, which should be p.
  • Some refs (95, 97, 98, 101, 103, 106) are missing en dashes in their page ranges. Giants2008 (Talk) 02:46, 13 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fixed and fixed. --PresN 03:11, 13 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • 103 is missing a range entirely now. The other stuff is fixed. Giants2008 (Talk) 20:14, 13 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Whoops, now fixed. --PresN 00:43, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments
    • First sentence: is awarded annually to the best new...writer whose first work of science fiction or fantasy appearing in a professional publication was published in the previous two... - sounds a little awkward. Perhaps "is an award given annually to the best new...writer whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy appearing in a professional publication was published within the two previous calendar years."
    • Intro: and who is considered one of the most important and influential - this is rather blunt. Can this be re-framed more factually? Like, "The prize is named in honor of science fiction editor and writer John W. Campbell, whose science fiction writing and his role as editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact made him one of the most influential editors in the early history of science fiction."
    • Second paragraph: clarify here that the nomination procedure for the Campbell Award is the same as the Hugo Awards, because references 4+5 only say "Hugo Award". maclean (talk) 09:41, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fixed all of these. --PresN 19:50, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Two more comments: (1) Should The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction be italized? (2) After re-reading that intro sentence, perhaps the phrase "science fiction or fantasy" doesn't need to be repeated. What do you think about " is an award given annually to the best new science fiction or fantasy writer whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy was published within the two previous calendar years." —maclean (talk) 08:14, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, it should be (now done) and yes, that's much smoother (also done). --PresN 01:21, 18 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. All issues resolved. I've fact-checked the list of writers and the prose content. All the refs are to reliable sources (mostly The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction). maclean (talk) 17:44, 19 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • The lede is a bit long - four paragraphs in the lede, plus another paragraph in the "Winners and nominees" section. Could that be shortened a bit? And is the separate section necessary? I know your most recent Hugo FL is similar, but it struck me as a bit long.
  • Images - with that many notable authors, surely there are a couple images that could be added?

-- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 18:31, 15 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • It's a bit long, but that's because there's no corresponding "article" to go with the list, so I had to put all of the information here. The separate paragraph was originally a sentence or two, but with each of these nominations more information seems to get added to it. I've added in an infobox with a relevant image; is that enough? I could add in some authors, but I'm not sure about adding in a bunch of photos just for decoration. --PresN 01:21, 18 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I can understand the lede length, and it's not a show-stopper for me.
Despite comments below about authors not being notable for their looks, but rather for their writing, I don't think that's appropriate. This is a list of people. Having images of those people (where appropriate and copyright-friendly) makes the list that much better. I can't support it as an FL without them. -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 22:59, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from Goodraise 22:35, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comments from Goodraise
  • Any particular reason why you use both shortlist and short-list?
  • Fixed to shortlist.
  • "those with a white background are the nominees on the short-list." – Now I'm confused. After reading the lead, I thought the winner was picked out of the five writers on the shortlist.
  • Fixed to "other nominees on the shortlist".
  • How can there be 5 writers on the shortlist and 6 writers per year in the table?
  • There's generally 5 per year, especially after the first few years. You get six when there was a tie in the nominations- e.g. the top six nomination counts were 10,8,7,6,5,5. It's possible with all of the Hugo-esque awards, but anecdotally the Campbell nominees typically get fairly low counts of nominations, which makes it quite likely that you'll get a tie.
  • You may want to explain that to the reader.
  • (tie)* – This seems a bit crude. How about adding an additional symbol?
  • Changed to +.
  • The infobox says "Currently held by". Wouldn't it be more accurate to say something like "Most recent recipient"?
  • Well, no big deal.
  • "The award"/"the award" appears more often than necessary (e.g. "Writers become eligible for the award once they have ...").
  • Removed a few.

Goodraise 22:14, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for the review! Commented inline. --PresN 00:23, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Some additional comments from Goodraise
  • It would make the tablesort feature more useful if each writer got a line of his or her own.
  • They do- except for that one pair that was nominated together in 1989, which I don't quite get. Seems they had only written that one work, and wrote it together. Splitting it into two lines makes it appear to be two nominations, but it wasn't. Or else I've misinterpreted what you meant.
  • You could split their line and mark them as a co-nomination, no?
  • "Ref (s)" -> "Ref." – Ref is an abbreviation and no line contains more than one of them.
  • Fixed.
  • Forgot the period?

Goodraise 17:15, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Commented inline. --PresN 19:56, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Revisited. Goodraise 22:29, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Period added, nomination split into two- how's that? --PresN 18:29, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Revisited. Goodraise 13:45, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yet another comment from that insufferable Goodraise
  • Since there's only one writer per line now, change "Writer(s)" to "Writer"?

On the verge of supporting. Goodraise 13:45, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Revisited. Goodraise 22:33, 7 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Regarding the images requested by other reviewers, I'd like to say that I disagree. While I'm usually the first to ask for non-essentials to be added to lists, I think, considering the subject matter, it might not be appropriate to force images onto this article. Writers become notable for their writing, not their looks. I wouldn't recognize my favorite author if I met him on the street. They're not politicians, pop-stars or professional baseball players. We shouldn't treat them the same just to spice-up our articles. Goodraise 22:14, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Goodraise 22:35, 8 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support - After reading through this list and looking at the sources, I find no issues that would prevent me from supporting this list's promotion to FL. To comment on a couple of issues brought up by previous reviewers: I think that the lead is a proper length for a list that does not have a corresponding article, and really a proper length overall for an entry that exceeds 70 KB. I find that I agree with Goodraise above with regards to images - they would be rather useless, IMO, because authors are not famous for their looks, they are famous for their work. If, at some point, copyright is removed from the covers of any of the works, it might be interesting to have those included, but that will most likely be decades in the future, so not something we have to worry about now! So, overall, I am happy with this list as it now stands. However, I might suggest that the nominator put neutrally worded posts on the talk pages of the editors who have commented above to see if they have further comments or concerns that are preventing them from supporting the nomination - this list has been on the page for two months now and has attracted quite a few comments but only one specific support/oppose declaration. Dana boomer (talk) 18:15, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thank you for reviewing; I've posted to the commentors asking them to return. --PresN 22:54, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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