Wikipedia:Featured article review/Greek mythology/archive2

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

The article was delisted by DrKay via FACBot (talk) 9:33, 27 March 2021 (UTC) [1].

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Greek mythology

Notified: Yannismarou, Paul August, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Greece, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mythology, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rome, 2020-11-21

Review section

Last reviewed in 2006, and with no recently active main editor, this very old FA needs a tuneup to bring it to current FA standards. The talk page notice three months ago yielded no response and no edits. There is uncited text, listiness, poor image layout, inconsistent citations, MOS issues, and more detailed on talk. This is one of our oldest FAs, harking back to the days of Refreshing Brilliant Prose, so I hope knowledgeable editors will engage to bring it to status. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:46, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

• Some comments, not a complete review:
  • Citation formatting is very inconsistent.
  • I question the use of Victor Davis Hanson here, considering the polemical nature of his work (Who killed Homer); the sentence According to Victor Davis Hanson, a military historian, columnist, political essayist, and former classics professor, and John Heath, a classics professor is also very awkward.
  • The whole section "Greek and Roman conceptions of myth" looks bizarre and possibly OR. It relies way too much on Hanson and Heath. The inclusion of that very long citation of Plato is not properly done as well.
  • The writing is often unnecessary long, such as in the introduction of "Survey of mythic history" (a bad title btw), where it mentions pederasty. The style and titles should be simpler.
  • I don't like when modern paintings are used randomly in the article while we have a wealth of ancient artifacts and pictures to illustrate the subject; modern paintings should only go in the "Motifs in Western art and literature" section, because they give a distorted interpretation of the myths (that of modern painters). Pictures of ancient Greek coins are also missing from the article (they often depicted Greek myths).
  • Despite the lede sentence saying "Modern scholars study the myths to shed light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece", there is no real discussion of the political use of mythology among the Greeks.
  • IMO, it must be delisted. T8612 (talk) 04:27, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

  Hello T8712; thanks for your actionable comments. To keep motivations high and time pressure low for editors that want to save an article at FAR, we don't declare keep or delist in this phase; that's for FARC. FemkeMilene (talk) 19:43, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

llywrch comments

• I find many of the "facts" presented about Greek mythology too definite when they are, in the end, opinions. Informed & expert opinions, but still opinions. When X says A, one should not write "A is true" but "X believes A" & why.
• The archeological angle is not well integrated. Obviously there are Mycenaean roots to Greek mythology, but these roots are not explicated. And the role of imagery on Greek pottery -- that it often portrays alternative versions of myths -- is badly explained. (As well as mentioning the possibility that these alternative versions may only be idiosyncratic inventions of the pot's decorator.)
• Structuralist or post-structuralist analysis of Greek mythology is relegated to a sentence under "Comparative and psychoanalytic approaches". Not all analysis of mythology is either comparative or psychoanalytic in nature.
• One fact is overlooked: much that can be written about Greek mythology does not apply to mythology of other civilizations. This is an issue that crops up when the various generalizations or insights about Greek mythology are applied to Native American or Chinese Taoist mythology: their myths do not involve gods & goddesses, but supernatural creatures who are not the object of worship. (I believe G.S. Kirk in his Myth makes this point.)
• T8612 makes a good point about the selection of illustrations: better to use examples of contemporaneous art than modern ones, unless there is a reason to use modern ones.
• I also made some comments at Talk:Modern understanding of Greek mythology that might be applicable here.

This is a complex subject. Even experts goof up in covering it. So the fact that it's not perfect should not be read to mean it is incompetently written. -- llywrch (talk) 07:35, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

A. Parrot comment

In addition to everything others have said, the "Motifs in Western art and literature" section needs expansion. (It has a corresponding subarticle, but it's only a paragraph longer than the section.) Greek mythology pervades Western culture, and while the section lists a lot of the more significant examples, its sheer extent doesn't really come across. And while the article acts as if Greek mythology was nearly forgotten until the Renaissance, the Byzantine Renaissance and the Matter of Rome beg to differ. A. Parrot (talk) 16:55, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

• Move to FARC, it does not appear that anyone is willing to address the concerns. Moving to FARC does not preclude that someone still may! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:05, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

  I may be a new editor, but I atleast want to try to make this article a bit better. Blue Jay (talk) 01:14, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

  You won’t be able to do that with greekmythology.com . [2] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:17, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, I know. Turns out, its just an app, so its pretty unreliable. Blue Jay (talk) 01:34, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

• Move to FARC - a good bit of work needed. Hog Farm _Talk 03:12, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

FARC section

Issues raised in the review section include sourcing, prose, comprehensiveness and style. DrKay (talk) 09:40, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

• Delist. This article isn't that different from many non-FA articles on large and popular topics. A lot of the content and sourcing is solid, but the comprehensiveness is a bit wonky (some major topics are unmentioned, others are overemphasized), some of the sourcing is questionable, and the article as a whole doesn't feel very cohesive. Having unsuccessfully attempted to write an FA-level article on the mythology of another culture, one on which the sources are far less voluminous, I have some idea of the kind of work it would take to revamp this one. Nobody seems to have stepped up for that so far, and barring a herculean effort (pun intended), I don't see it happening on the timescale of an FAR. A. Parrot (talk) 20:53, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
• Delist per A. Parrot. This sort of monumental topic is hard to get balanced and comprehensively sourced, but this article falls pretty far from the FA criteria in its current state. Hog Farm _Talk 00:05, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

@DrKay: you forgot to add this to the FAR archive. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:10, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

• Closing note: This removal candidate has been delisted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. DrKay (talk) 09:33, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.