Talk:The Unknown Soldier (novel)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Cognissonance (talk · contribs) 05:08, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I'll take this one. Cognissonance (talk) 05:08, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

The review was done parallel with Talk:The Unknown Soldier (2017 film)/GA1.

Lead

• "one of the best-selling books of all time in Finland" – "of all time" is unnecessary. Amended.
• "It has sold nearly 800,000 units, has been translated into 20 different languages and has been adapted into three films with the latest one released in 2017." – Only the first "has" and "been" are necessary. Amended.

Synopsis

Setting and characters

• "A picture of the whole nation in a microcosm" – What is the purpose of this? It just seems like a more verbose way of saying the line that follows. Yeah, true, sounded nicely flowing when paraphrased from the source, but I removed it to be more encyclopedic.
• "After all, they are all there just to get the job done" – WP:POV. Removed. I hope that the point made by the sources comes through in the paragraph though: that the soldiers treat the war as any other job to cope with it (duh, I bet every soldier has to do that) or smth along those lines? Any suggestions?

Plot

• "To immortalize the attitude and bonds the soldiers shared" – Is there a source that suggests this? If not, it's WP:OR / WP:POV. Most likely it popped up unconsciously from some sources, but I removed it to keep the plot summary totally based on the novel.

Themes

• "an organ lacking in earlier depictions" – WP:POV: "an organ he saw was lacking in earlier depictions". Added.

Reception and legacy

• <"that almost every Finn has read" – Establish that this is because it is read by every Finnish child at school. Hmmmm the source didn't state this explicitly (just says that almost every Finn has read it) and I don't think it's mandatory in literature classes anymore. I added "has read at school or some other point in their lives", but is it too clumsy or uninformative now?

Overall

There are some questions to be answered from the notes, otherwise the article is very impressive. On hold. Cognissonance (talk) 07:54, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Cognissonance: Thx for the review! I've addressed your comments. Funny how blind one becomes to his own little NPOV or OR even while totally trying to avoid them. Manelolo (talk) 08:56, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Manelolo: I whittled the sentence down to: "that Finns were given to read at school". Is this a fair compromise? Cognissonance (talk) 10:27, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

​ Hmm I'm not personally too comfortable with it since the source only says "Soon after The Unknown Soldier was published in 1954, the novel was designated a classic in Finnish culture, and today it is a book that almost every Finn has read" and I cannot find a good source for the school claim. I dug more into the source in question and found perhaps a better resonating and more informative claim in its notes; thus, I switched the sentence to the following: "but has since become a revered household classic rated as the book that has most profoundly impressed Finnish citizens." If it's still odd, I'd suggest just removing them? Manelolo (talk) 11:16, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

It doesn't sound odd, but which source does it come from? The source that substantiates the school claim is ref. 6 (The Herald). Cognissonance (talk) 11:43, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

​ Oh my, didn't even realise it's mentioned in ref 6 as well (I took the original "read by every Finn" quote from ref 2). To keep things simple, I undid my latest revision back to your compromise. The latest claim was from the end notes of ref 2, paraphrasing another source. That would require maybe a bit more extra work with reffing etc. so better to just remove it for now. Hope it's all dandy now. Manelolo (talk) 12:37, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Manelolo: The article looks great. Cognissonance (talk) 21:43, 6 February 2018 (UTC)