Talk:Bonny Hicks

Approval of article

See Citizendium Pilot talk:Literature Workgroup for comment. Stephen Ewen 03:47, 14 January 2007 (CST)

Hi Stephen, This article looks great. There are a few things that need to happen before this can become an "approved article". First, an editor needs to nominate it. Since you've done the majority of the work on the article, any Literature editor can do so. Just put out the nudge that you need one of the editors to give it the ok. Then they should follow the directions here. I've removed the approval note on the front page. -- Sarah Tuttle 18:51, 15 January 2007 (CST)

Okay, thanks Sarah. I have understood clearly who can approve but have been unclear about who could nominate. Stephen Ewen 21:33, 15 January 2007 (CST)

Uncertain source in reference

In the current version of the article, there is a reference as follows:

Tu Wei-Ming characterized Hick's life and philosophy as providing a "sharp contrast to Hobbes' cynic[al] view of human existence"

The cited source is a bit puzzling, for several reasons:

1) The original essay seems only to be found at http://www.zaobao.com/bilingual/pages/bilingual221298.html, and yet it is attributed as having being published by Harvard University -- I can find no trace of it at www.harvard.edu.

2) The essay itself contains a number of grammatical errors and stylistic infelicities, e.g. "the Harvard University," instead of "Harvard University." and " Hobbes' cynic view of human existence" which should be "Hobbes' cynical view"; the article is credited to Professor Tu and yet refers to him in the third person.

3) I think this essay is more likely written by someone other than Professor Tu, and was published abroad, most likely in Singapore -- we should have a more accurate reference, or a higher quality reference, or the remarks attributed to Professor Tu should be paraphrased rather than quoted, given the uncertain provenance of the source.

Russell Potter 10:32, 14 January 2007 (CST)

Sorry for that bit of sloppiness. The reference source is actually Lianhe Zaobao, which the paper's owner Singapore Press Holdings describes here as "the flagship Chinese daily in Singapore". Lianhe Zaobao is no doubt an entirely legitimate and reputable Singaporean daily. Here is the newspaper's main webpage: http://www.zaobao.com/

The first paragraph of the article is not written by Tu and does refer to him in the third person. It is clearly an intro paragraph inserted by the daily's editor, albeit the page formatting does not make that immediately apparent. The second paragraph begins Tu's article, where the first person begins and is maintained. I would fully expect the entire English version of the article to have a few grammatical problems, given that Lianhe Zaobao is a Chinese language daily. Someone at the daily probably translated Tu's article into English which, by the way, gives an indication of its importance.

I have:

1) Fixed the citation.

2) Simply made the change from "cynic" to "cynical" in the Tu quote, since I think we can safely surmise that if the Chinese version (viewable below the English version at the URL) were translated perfectly it would say such.

Stephen Ewen 18:02, 14 January 2007 (CST)

Approval

Stephen (and Sara),

Have a look at the discussion, Larry's post and my reply, in the Literature forum. I'm not sure that we have, at the moment, any editor currently participating in CZ who has the relevant expertise to approve this article. I did ask a friend/colleage, who teaches postcolonial literature here in Providence at Brown University, if she might have a look at it, but she had never heard of Bonny Hicks and didn't feel comfortable making any comments on the article. If we could find a currently active scholar, working with Asian writers and Singaporean literature -- and familiar with Hicks -- willing to join the project, that would be the person I think we'd need.

I also have some doubts about the current iteration of the article -- to me, at least, it doesn't read as much like an encyclopedia article as it does as a sort of fan/tribute page. The use of emotional tributes to Hicks's memory, and many subheaders, may confuse readers who are not already familiar with Hicks, or with Singaporean writers. I think it could be improved along these lines, but that would take a bit of time, and some more attention from other editors. I haven't seen any other Literature editor other than myself in either the wiki or the Forums for months; if we had a few more people aboard I think we could do a better, and more collective, enactment of the approval process.

Russell Potter 10:40, 16 January 2007 (CST)

Russell, clearly the answer is that we need to do some serious recruiting--posting to mailing lists, particularly. We will be in a better position to do this after we do a public launch, and if I had time to organize recruitment myself, I would. But we will certainly soon be getting around to a serious recruitment drive. --Larry Sanger 15:41, 16 January 2007 (CST)

I am sure these sorts of sub-specialists will come in time, through the hard work of recruiting. I did suggest http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ellibst/ at http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,424.0.html

But I think I'll turn my attention for now to a figure "more close to home". Maybe Steinbeck. ;-) Stephen Ewen 21:28, 16 January 2007 (CST)