Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Power: A New Social Analysis

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[edit] Power: A New Social Analysis

Just finished and fully cited. I'm somewhat happy with the result, and spent a great deal of time on it. I hope this will help popularize one of Russell's more neglected works. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 00:48, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

• Object for the present. The second sentence in the lead seems to be a bit harsty, it should be preceded by a couple of sentences explaining the key ideas tackled in the lead below and why Russell argues. Also there is a POVish peacock "when examining the work as a whole, one can detect an exciting overall research project". Some passages highlighted in color (as in Demosthenes) would look nice. --Brand спойт 15:21, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I got rid of the funny sounding phrases in the intro, and added a few blue boxes. I think it looks nicer now. Hope that helps! { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 01:19, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Mild object. I've recently noticed there is a lack of the book infobox. The number of portraits could be decreased in my opinion to avoid some gallery appearance. Also it would be better to turn the chapter list into a table and move higher, to the Work section. --Brand спойт 17:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I've added the infobox, as well as two of the portraits. The intro part now seems rather "busy" to me, but I'd like other people to give their thoughts on whether or not that's a bad thing.

I'm hesitant to change the chapter listing into a table, since I don't intuitively know why it needs to be done aesthetically. (It might help if I could see an example of a nice looking chapter list from another article.) I also like it near the end of the article, in order to postpone the less interesting narrative to the end, so the reader doesn't have to slog through it. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 04:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Neutral. Already a nice work, try to download the book cover. To be strict I would support after some additional copyedit, consider assessment. --Brand спойт 11:49, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, I added the book cover and provided a Wikibooks assessment (hopefully others agree with it). { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 23:30, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

• Oppose for the moment (sorry Ben). I've copyedited for various minor problems (prose, referencing, dashes, heading styles), but I still worry about several things:

:1. The article is too long. Partly this is a matter of the prose needing trimming (and I've done a bit of that), but partly it's because it goes into far too much detail. An analytic summary of Russell's main themes and arguments would be more to the point than the level of detail in the current version.

2. Sometimes, the article slips into what seems to be Russell's prose style, and it's often unclear whether this is paraphrase, close paraphrase or unreferenced quote. Quotations are also inconsistent in style: some are in "double quotes", some in italics, others in "both" (which looks horrible).

3. The article is inconsistent in whether it reports in the present tense ('Russell argues...') or the past ('Russell argued...'). I've tried to edit these to all present tense, but may have missed some. This needs going over again.

4. The following don't apparently make sense: 'Third, the means by which one pursues one's goal must be such that they outweigh the value of the end' (Philosophy of power section); 'Collective action should be restricted to those areas that are primarily "geographical"' (Governance section).

5. Missing references: C. Wright Mills quote in endnote; Russell quote in first paragraph of Propaganda and Business section.

If these issues can be sorted - and I'm sure they can - I'll support. As a Mill scholar, I can't resist mentioning in passing that Russell's critique of Mill is rubbish, but obviously that doesn't detract from the article. Cheers, Sam Clark 12:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the critical eye, Sam! I'll do my best to fix those problems. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 15:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've gone over it, and done the following:

• Trimmed down a few parts where the information wasn't really important (i.e., with respect to the history of priestly/kingly power, and an examination of the forms of power as used by the Nazis). It is a bit long, but I am not sure how to trim it down without losing the comprehensiveness required by an FAC.
• I've also changed those italicized portions which might be interpreted as quotes into either quotations or plain prose, and have inserted new paragraphs for the bulkier quotes. I didn't eliminate all italicization in quotes, because that's how it appears in the original text, and we have to stay true to the work (even if it looks ugly).
• Also changed everything to present tense, or tried to.
• Hopefully made the two problematic quotes more intelligible.
• Cited the Mills and Russell-business quotes. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 18:04, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I did some more trimming. The main body of text is approx. 7300 words (well within the recommended 6000-10000 word bracket). Granted, file size is still bigger than recommended, but the warning for file size is only mentioned in the wikiguidelines as an indicator for the length of the body of the article. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 16:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. I've struck through those of my objections I think you've addressed. I have some further remarks (one of which I forgot about, above). 1. Although the prose has been tightened up, I still think the article is too detailed, too much like a plot summary, and insufficiently analytic. But this may just be a matter of taste, so I'm not making it a basis of opposition. 2. The C. Wright Mills quote is still not properly referenced. It needs a page number, not just a book attribution; it's listed as Mills 1956 in the footnote and 1957 in the bibliography; and it's attributed to Columbia 1996, which isn't in the bibliography at all. 3. This final one is partly my fault, because I forgot to mention above that I'd been bold and done something about it. I suggest the following formats for referencing. a. inline references to pages of the book should be in the form (45), before the fullstop, not (pp. 45) after it, because the latter looks ugly and because 'pp' means pageS, not page. I changed most of these in my first copyedit, and I think I've got all of them now. b. footnote references should be tucked up tight after the punctuation mark, with no space - text.^[1] Again, I think I've got all of these, but it might need rechecking. Cheers, Sam Clark 13:07, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

1. I did my best to portray the work in an analytic fashion in a minimal sense, by giving names to those discrete concepts that Russell might have considered candidates for either "laws of social dynamics" or constituents thereof (i.e., "emergency solidarity", "psychological types of influence", the "rule of three phases", etc.) Doing more than that -- putting things in the form of "there is an x such that...", etc. -- would seem to be pushing the envelope, so to speak. Don't get me wrong, I share your dissapointment about the lack of analyticity of the work, as do both Willis and Brittan. And I have (independently of this article) attempted to formulate how his argument could have proceeded in an analytic fashion. However, those formulations would be OR, and I must stay within the confines of Wikipedia rules for the purposes of this article, and do not want to depart from Russell's work.

2. Sorry! I had cited it according to the compilation's name and not by author. Just fixed it. The external link next to the reference was meant to substitute for a page citation. Is that acceptable?

3. I had mistaken "pp" to mean "printed page" -- alas. I'll do a double check on that. Thanks. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 15:53, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

• Object—1a. Here are examples from the top that indicate that the whole text needs a good copy-edit, preferably by someone who's not in the field.
  • "Russell's ambition is to help forward a new method of conceiving the social sciences." "Help forward" is ambiguous.
  • "how and when one form of power changes into another form of power"—Remove the last three words.
  • "is capable of being so unsatisfied with their lot"—No, "dissatisfied" if you're talking of degrees. Why is plural "they" used in this sentence?
  • "Doesn't"? See MoS.
  • "that they should go out and try to accumulate more goods than meet their needs." "Go out"? Where, to the local corner shop? Remove as too informal, and unnecessary anyway. Insert "are necessary" after "than". Tony 02:28, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I agree that #1 and #2 are awkward, and changed them as per your suggestion. Also, I will go through and remove the contractions As it happens, the only contraction in the article was the one you noted; so that's that.

I also removed "go out".

Regarding #3: as far as I can tell, there is no difference between "unsatisfied" and "dissatisfied". Looking at Merriam-Webster, the morpheme "dis" has no conventional connotation with degrees. All that M-W tells us is that 'dis-' carries the same (relevant) connotations as 'un-': namely, of opposition and negation. (Perhaps Oxford English is more precise?) I wouldn't object to the change if it were made, but I don't see any justification to do so, so won't do it myself.

The plural "they" is used in reference to "humans". Is that not clear? { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 03:27, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

• Object. I was surprised to encounter "explained below" in the lead - please have a look at WP:LEAD. The lead should be a stand-alone summary of the article. The second wikilink I hit was a redirect, and the term social dynamics was not wikilinked in the lead; the article should be thoroughly checked for wikilinking. The page number references are mixed with cite.php notes, resulting in a mixed reference style, which could be confusing to the reader. All book references should have ISBNs. Critical reception should be expanded: most of the text given in that section is from Russell himself, so the reader is given little context of other critical reception. There are some fan-crufty statments that need references (example, "The lack of theoretical rigor may seem uncharacteristic of Russell, since he is routinely praised for his analytic treatment of philosophical issues."). The article reads like a promotion or summary of the book, mixed with OR or a personal essay (for example, "By 'economic democracy', Russell means a kind of democratic socialism:" - does he say that, or is that the writer's opinion?). Sandy (Talk) 04:28, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Sandy, thanks for your input.

• Offending sentence has been removed just now.
• Where there were suitable links to redirect, I have redirected (just now). Exceptions: "domination", which goes to a disambig page, where the relevant option is not given a wiki; Quietism.
• ISBNs are not available for all editions of all texts. Where necessary, I have placed ASIN#. Will replace the rest when I have time (off to work right now).
• It is not at all true that Russell was the only one mentioned in the critical portion. Yes, Brittan and Willis were in the Russell text, but their opinions are not Russell's opinions. Still, I agree that it could do with an expansion. This would be much easier if I had access to scholarly resources.
• I don't agree that the quoted statements are "fancruft", and think that a reading of the material would support the text. Can provide sample quotes, if you think that would make things clearer. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 17:16, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

In addition, I have just now added the last ASIN/ISBNs, and written "p." before page numbers so that they are less confusing to the reader. I have also added a citation to the "democratic socialism" sentence, to show that his intent was quite clear.

Unfortunately, I am not at all sure where one might read OR into any of what's been written, so I can't either act or comment upon that. Impressions are one thing, examples are another. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 03:17, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I have just recently had another pair of eyes copyedit the page for grammar and style, and edited accordingly. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 20:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• Support (changing !vote from above, having struck out met objections). Nice job, Lucidish. Sam Clark 16:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
• Thanks Sam! Also, I should have mentioned this more boldly, but I support the FAC. Though it should be noted that I am the author of the vast majority of the article. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 20:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
• Object - I don't know how to say this any other way but the layout is downright ugly. The small images, the non-standard TOC, and the ===== sections are a bit unmanageably for my taste. The references to the titular work itself need to be cited to the proper page number, for every single sentence within the relevant section ("the work"). The critical reception section could use a broader scope. The intro needs to be a bit meatier as well. savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 09:13, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

TOC unfloated, subsections merged, citations added after every mention of "the work".

It wouldn't be appropriate to make the intro much longer than it is. I agree that the critical reception section could use expansion, but I simply do not have the resources to do it. I've been trying to track down some relevant articles -- i.e., a paper written by Alvin Goldman on social power during the 70s, where 'Power: ANSA' is cited -- but this is just not possible when I don't have access. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 17:06, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Have you tried google scholar/google books? If you run into an article that you need but don't have access to, I may be able to get it for you. savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 21:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer, but I think Sam has me covered. And yeah, I found the article with Google Scholar.

Would like to get my hands on SR Clegg's "Frameworks of Power" to see just how substantive his treatment of P:ANSA are, and whether or not it would be fair to say that serious scientific interest in the work has grown over the past two decades. But that's probably not possible short of buying the book. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 03:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. The article is clearly WP:OR in places and several of the notes violate WP:NPOV. Less seriously, the prose isn't brilliant (1a) and the lead could use work (2a). Mikker ^(...) 03:25, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

It would be far more helpful if you were to say where, exactly, you believe that OR is present, because I've made a concerted effort to be merely descriptive. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 03:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Nevertheless, I can see how some of the notes were borderline, and have trimmed out any possible NPOV. { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 03:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

• Object. Confusing ref style; article has some footnotes but also lots of strange citations with numbers in the brackets (ex: (251), (pp. 242-251), 147, sic)). Please stadnarized, preferably to footnotes. There are still unreferenced paragraphs. Table from footnote 11 would look better inside main article. One picture is missing captions entirely, captions of others I believe fail WP:CAPTION. The article seems also light on inlinks (per WP:BTW), I had to ilink social philosophy in the lead, and just the first section has quite a lot terms that could use hyperlinks (ex. ethical, pessimistic, goods, needs...).-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  19:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Have standardized all citations according to Harvard system, as well as added some links, and more citations where they seemed lacking. It wasn't my impression that every substantive paragraph needed to be referenced, but I've gone ahead and done it anyway. Table from footnote has been moved into the article. Will do image captions now.{ Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 04:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Inline links added, and image captions added. I hope that's enough to change your mind! { Ben S. Nelson } _Lucidish 16:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Indeed - good job.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  01:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)