Arcticle proposed for approval - Bonny Hicks

[Profrap]

Stephen Ewen has proposed the article on Bonny Hicks for approval by the Literature Workgroup.  He's posted notices on the wiki itself, but I thought we might take advantage of this forum for a quicker and more dynamic way to discuss the approval process.

I have made a few copyediting-type changes to the page as proposed, and I think we should all give it a close read and make sure it reads as smoothly as possible.  I don't have any knowledge of this writer, but perhaps others so, and could address more substantive issues to make sure the article is accurate as it can be.

This amended version should then be re-nominated for approval -- I think that's what the Biology editors eventually did with Biology --

Russell Potter

[Profrap]

[copied from the article's Talk page, for reference here]

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 ("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 referes to him in the third person.

3) I think this essay is more likely written by someone other than Professor Tu, and may be a translation -- 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.

I also wonder whether or not the entry on Hicks might better be condensed somewhat -- the article seems unncessarily long and wordy, more like a "tribute page" than an encyclopedia entry ... but I would want to hear what other Literature Editors and Authors think about this ...

Russell Potter

[Profrap]

Hello? Hello?  Is anoyone out there?

My understanding is that at least two other editors would have to approve this entry, but I have not heard from any other Literature editors since this article was proposed for approval.  Perhaps we should wait until, at least, there are more of us?

Russell Potter

[Larry Sanger]

Hi Russell,

Well, I don't know who's worked on the article, but any editor who is adequately expert on Bonny Hicks and who has not worked on the article to any significant degree (I know, we're dealing with vague categories here, but hopefully they'll be useful enough for our purposes now) may singlehandedly approve the article.

This is what the approval process page says: http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Citizendium_Pilot:Approval_Process

And that page is linked from the project home page, which should have an exhaustive set of links to all policy pages: http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Citizendium_Pilot:Project_Home

If you, Russell, don't fit the bill (because you've worked on the article, or aren't really an expert on Bonny Hicks), then you could do us a favor and recruit a suitable person from outside the project, to join the project and then to do the honors...

Anyway, hope this helps.

[Profrap]

Hi Larry,

Thanks for your note.  I'd already read over the description of the process, and for the time being, this entry doesn't look like one we can approve.  I actually did ask a colleague in my department whose field is postcolonial literature, and she said she'd never heard of Bonny Hicks.  Hicks may very well be a noteworthy person, but I'm not certain that. within the literary world outside of Singapore, she has made a significant impact *as an author*.  We'd need at least a specialist, in literature, who has some extensive acquaintance with Singaporean literature -- I will see what I can do to find one, but at the moment I'm a bit skeptical.

Personally, I think the Literature Workgroup may have better luck improving or approving an article on either a well-known literary figure (be it Salman Rushdie or Virginia Woolf), genre, or period, since there, presumably anyone with an advanced degree in literature would have the capacity to work on and help approve such an entry.   This may -- and, I hope, will -- change when we get more people.

RP

[Stephen Ewen]

Ah, I guess I should learn to scroll further down on the forum home page. Lot's of nice goodies down here I have yet to explore. 

Dr. Ismail S. Talib, Department of English Language & Literature of the National University of Singapore, would be an incredible asset to the CZ project.  His homepage is at http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/ellibst/

Incidentally, I quoted Talib in the Hicks article.

[Jason Sanford]

Are we still aiming to try and approve this article? I've been away from CZ for a bit due to a personal writing project (a book I'm trying to complete) but I'm willing to help get this article to the approval stage. Are we still on?

[Stephen Ewen]

If you feel it is with your expertise areas, certainly. 

[Russell Potter]

I think this article still needs a bit of work -- and deserves it -- but for the time being, I am hoping that Literature authors and editors will join me in working on the toplevel Literature entry.  Once that is ready for approval, I think we can look at entries for individual authors, and/or aspects of literature (it would be great, for instance, to have an entry on postcolonial literature, which the Bonny Hicks entry could reference), but if indeed CZ is going to launch any time soon, I think that a very strong, approved Literature entry would be the best thing a nonforked CZ could have to show for itself in this area.