Talk:The Great Gatsby

Road to Featured Article status

Hi, everybody. Now that we have achieved good article status (and made improvements since), it's time to focus on moving forward and try to make this become a Wikipedia:Featured article. The biggest defect, I think, is the over-reliance on Mizener's "Gatsby, 35 Years Later" article. There's currently 20 references to it! If it weren't for that, I'd feel comfortable submitting it for FA review even now. To pass the feature article criteria (please read), I think we should massage in substitutes for at least 10 of those references. So let's make that the primary goal. There may be another minor issues with the referencing style because of the dozen or so short inline references. We may have to get rid of the Bibliography by making them individual inline references. I'll take care of this either before or after FA review. There's only about a dozen refs to change if need be. FA review is far more stringent than GA review so we need to pepper the article with as many more high-quality refs as we can find. There's a few ideas in the talk page archives that could be used to make the article better, so if you want to help, consider reading those. The Historical context section may be low-hanging fruit for expansion. All in all though, I think this article is 95% of the way there. Jason Quinn (talk) 02:19, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Regarding 'Nicholas'

Just for future reference, the novel never says that Nick is a nickname. "Nicholas" never appears in the book although "Nicolas" does (for another person). So the simple fact is that we don't know that Nick is a nickname, or the spelling of the full name if it were. It is extrapolation to assume it is "Nicholas" and we should not use it. Jason Quinn (talk) 02:23, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

George is not told that Gatsby killed Myrtle

In the book, George is never told that Gatsby killed Myrtle although editors occasionally put this in the article. I carefully read looking for this when I was doing my editing related to the GA review. If memory serves, George just sort of figures it out in his wanderings. In particular, Tom does not tell George that Gatsby killed her. In the 2013 movie, I think Tom did. I can't recall for the 1974 movie. Anyway, we should be vigilant that this mistake does not creep into the article, as it could severely impact the story and, in particular, Tom. If it is me, however, that is in error, please explain why using exact passages from the novel. Jason Quinn (talk) 02:44, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Supporting that: In the 1974 movie you don't get to hear what Tom speaks with George when they meet after the accident. Later Tom explains Nick that he told George who's the car owner. I just watched it! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.5.182.194 (talk) 00:35, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Analysis of IP edits

Here's a quick analysis of the IP edits since the last page protection expired on 9 August 2013.

Basically I sorted the IP edits into three groups. The first is for "vandalism OR malicious OR bad edits", the second is for "Helpful edits OR neutral but well-intended OR Unhelpful but good faith edits", and the third is for edits that are puzzling or too ambiguous to judge. If an IP edited multiple times, I considered this only one incident and listed the number of subseqeuent edits by the IP. (People either tend to do all helpful stuff or all vandalism so that simplifies matters a bit.)

It ended up there were 12 in the first group, 15 in the second, and none in the third. Of course, some of the edits were difficult to gauge and I had to make a judgment call (also some can only be judged in context of the surrounding edits). I don't claim my snap judgment to be perfect but here is my breakdown:

vandalism OR malicious OR bad edits

[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] + 2 more, [8], [9], [10], [11], [12] + 1 more

Helpful edits OR neutral but well-intended OR Unhelpful but good faith edits

[13], [14], [15], [16], [17] + 1 more, [18] + 6 more, [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27]

Unsure

(empty)

At first glance, it appears that the IP edits are helpfully contributing to the article. And, for a brief moment after the page was unprotected, they did. But most of the later IP edits have been of clear vandalism or of minimal or revertible value. Most of the even the non-vandal edits fall into the "neutral but well-intended" or "unhelpful but good faith edits" sub-categories, with only a few being bona-fide "helpful" edits.

The main questions I have are, "Are the IP edits doing more good or more harm to the article?" and "Does the page need semi-protection?" My overall opinion is the helpful IP edits have contributed little to the article's quality and the vandalism rate is significant. The page watchers have done a great job in reverting vandalism though. HOWEVER, This article happens to be one of the very highest traffic articles on Wikipedia however so perhaps taking that into account suggests the vandalism rate isn't so bad after all. It's a very close call according to our criteria for indefinite semi-protection but I don't think the page warrants semi-indefinite protection at this time. We are definitely above the 5% typical vandalism rate but slightly below a 50% threshold. That "threshold" from the criteria page is only a suggestion, however, and, as I explained, there may be extenuating circumstances for this article that make a higher rate acceptable.

Any other watchers care to comment? Do you think there's a need for indefinite semi-protection? Jason Quinn (talk) 17:38, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Daisy Fay

A recent edit changed Daisy's name to "Daisy Fay Buchanon" from "Daisy Buchanon (née Fay)". I have found only one instance in the novel in Chapter 4 where "Fay" is used: "The largest of the banners and the largest of the lawns belonged to Daisy Fay's house." [This is Jordan speaking about Daisy when Daisy was only 18 and was seeing Gatsby. Daisy lived in Louisville at the time.] It's ambiguous here whether "Fay" is her middle or maiden name. I suppose the most obvious and likely interpretation is that "Fay" is Daisy's middle name (after all the whole two name-name thing is a Southern cliché) and that the edit corrected an error that said it was her maiden name. It not unreasonable, however, to believe that "Daisy Fay" is her first and maiden name. I am unaware if there are any other statements that make implication's over Daisy's name. If I have missed some, please comment. I will re-add the change to make "Fay" her middle name but it would also be good to collect some sources that say one way or another. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:21, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Word Error

Resolved

Upon reading the Historical Content, I came upon a word which I've never seen or heard before, and I Googled it, but nothing came up. Does anyone know this word if it exists and its meaning?

"teyrtyrtyboohese" under Historical Content

Michele Haro — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.119.206.101 (talk) 23:58, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

It was recent typical non-sense vandalism. It has been reverted. Don't forget, you too can edit Wikipedia and correct such errors. It's easy to do. Please see Wikipedia:Tutorial/Editing for details. Jason Quinn (talk) 00:21, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Plot summary is loose plagiarism

So, look at this plot summary: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/gatsby/summary.html

And look at the one in the article. Kinda similar, right? A bit too much, I believe. What can/ought to be done? 98.71.51.89 (talk) 23:57, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Are you suggesting the Wikipedia article is plagiarism or Sparknotes? Jason Quinn (talk) 02:25, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

It seems much more probable that wiki would be doing the plagiarizing. But I don't know for sure. 98.71.49.61 (talk) 03:26, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I only now got around to reading the actual summary you linked. I missed your reply for whatever reason and kind of forgot about this thread. I do not see any similarity there that could be deemed plagiarism. You would have to elaborate much more. I suspected that you were suggesting the Wiki did but I wasn't sure. I wrote much of the current wording of the plot summary and I know I didn't plagiarize. In light of that, I wanted confirmation that you thought Sparknotes was the offending party before proceeding. As I do not see any substantial similarity, I consider it a non-issue. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:54, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Ha, I was the IP that posted about this years ago and for some reason I just though of it. There are still some strong similarities between this and the spakrnotes article, though less than I remembered, especially in the beginning. If you wrote most of it yourself, then I guess sparknotes is plagiarizing which is embarrassing to say the least.

For example, the start of the second paragraph of the Plot summary on wiki:

"As the summer progresses, Nick eventually receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's parties. Nick encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, an aloof and surprisingly young man who recognizes Nick from their same division in World War I. Through Jordan, Nick later learns that Gatsby knew Daisy from a romantic encounter in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion, hoping to one day rekindle their lost romance. Gatsby's extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are an attempt to impress Daisy in the hope that she will one day appear again at Gatsby's doorstep. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. They begin an affair..."

Sparknotes, third paragraph:

"As the summer progresses, Nick eventually garners an invitation to one of Gatsby’s legendary parties. He encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, a surprisingly young man who affects an English accent, has a remarkable smile, and calls everyone “old sport.” Gatsby asks to speak to Jordan alone, and, through Jordan, Nick later learns more about his mysterious neighbor. Gatsby tells Jordan that he knew Daisy in Louisville in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the green light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion. Gatsby’s extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are simply an attempt to impress Daisy. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy, but he is afraid that Daisy will refuse to see him if she knows that he still loves her. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. Their love rekindled, they begin an affair."

The beginning and ending portions especially are highly suspicious. I haven't had time to read through the rest, but I think this is sufficient evidence that some sort of funny business is going on. Brightnsalty (talk) 05:10, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Brightnsalty. This may be one of the slowest evolving conversations in history but (again) I only now noticed your reply and with your follow-up. Given your specific concerns, I now believe there may be some funny business going on. The text in question appears to have originated on 12 May 2013 with this edit by editor Saginaw-hitchhiker and it was tweaked only 10 hours later by this edit by editor Wolfdog. The Sparknotes text matches the earlier edit by Saginaw-hitchhiker: Sparksnotes uses the word "legendary" to describe the parties, a word which was removed by Wolfdog, and Sparknotes does not use the word "aloof" to describe Gatsby, which was added by Wolfdog. It appears there are two likely possibilities: A) Saginaw-hitchhiker copy-n-pasted a large block of text from Sparknotes, or B) somebody at Sparknotes copy-n-pasted from Wikipedia in a narrow 10 hour window. We need to get Saginaw-hitchhiker to confirm that his/her edits are original or to admit to plagiarism. I will bring this to the editor's attention. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:31, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

haha cool. Interested to see what happens. Brightnsalty (talk) 15:50, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

wow. impressive it took you this long! that's right! i've been plagiarizing for years!

kidding. evidently, i definitely took from sparknotes. i have little recollection of editing this article besides updating its lead section, and looking back, it appears i added critical reviews too. still, what i did was not right. i think i assumed sparknotes was user-submitted just as wikipedia is, but still, wrong nonetheless. thanks for bringing this to my attention. Saginaw-hitchhiker (talk) 23:47, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Okay, this is bad. I've just tagged this for Good Article reassessment, and will surely be delisted. I'm going to tag the Plot section as a copyright violation. Six and a half years of edits may have to be revision deleted. Saginaw-hitchhiker, it would help if you identify any and all text that may be copyright violations here. (And if you've done it for other articles, you ought to fix it there too.) I don't have the time to fix all this right now and I'm getting sick so I may be down-and-out for a while. Help by any and all would be good. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:57, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

when this was brought to my attention i was shocked -- i'm no serial infringer. still, the error was made, and i'll take a look at my history and review my work. my history with editing this page was brief. all i remember doing was editing the lead and critical reviews, which is why the summary copy/paste came as a surprise. i doubt you'll find any further errors in this article, but i'll do my best to identify if mistakes were made. Saginaw-hitchhiker (talk) 15:14, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Okay. But how to proceed here? All text derived from the original Sparknotes text is a derivative work and therefore also a copyright violation. There's well over a thousand edits to the article since. I don't think anyone wants to go through and figure out what text is kosher and what isn't. Maybe the entire Plot summary section should simply be rewritten? Jason Quinn (talk) 15:29, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

I'll make an attempt at rewriting the Plot Summary section this weekend. (Update: Rewrite submitted.) -- Flask (talk) 11:48, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Big ups, Flask! Thanks for doing some of the hard pulling here. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:17, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

How come only Gatsby has a separate page?

I never understood that apart from the pages a few years ago not having references and not meeting the notability standards at that point, but I think Daisy could have one since I've found a number of articles discussing her individually. This article. This book. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is compared to Daisy, though the comparison is debunked here, in this article. Informant16 12 September 2015

Posthumous fame

Is it true that the revival of interest in Gatsby (and Fitzgerald himself) was sparked by the dramatic death of Zelda in the house-fire? Valetude (talk) 20:25, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 January 2016

please say "Gatsby was in the internet is distract ooh look a kitten 99.41.81.181 (talk) 23:41, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Not done: this appears to be a joke, which is unsuitable for inclusion in the article. /wiae ★ /tlk 00:37, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 December 2016

The line about Wilson, "When he learns of the death of his wife, he shoots and kills Gatsby", is not strictly accurate, the ending is purposefully ambiguous. There is an alternate school of thought that Meyer killed Gatsby, or another character did so. It is impossible to say definitively that it was Wilson 86.137.206.209 (talk) 12:53, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. -- Dane2007 ^talk 06:16, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Dane2007 consensus is only required before "changes that are likely to be controversial". Changing these words is a part of writing down the plot, it is not our job to make assumptions. As this change reflects the plot of the book it is uncontroversial. Thank you. 109.149.222.224 (talk) 13:26, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Done I replaced the objectivity in the sentence with this change. Please ping me if there are further objections. JustBerry (talk) 03:45, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 December 2016

Ann Mao (talk) 02:51, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. DonIago (talk) 13:52, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Wolfshiem/Wolfsheim

Hmm ... well I edited Wolfshiem to what seems to be the correct (and, based on Googling, the more accepted) spelling of "Wolfsheim", then saw the note on Fitzgerald's original manuscript. To me it feels like Fitzgerald screwed up the spelling and it got corrected, but also feel free to revert that edit. -Kieran (talk) 19:38, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

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funeral for Gatsby

user:Doniago ("not sure this is an improvement; grammar and WP:TONE issues")
I corrected an false statement, if you want to optimize grammar feel free to improve the article. Any other opinions about the three attendees of the funeral? --Angerdan (talk) 15:35, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

If you were trying to WP:PING me, that's not how you ideally do it. Just an FYI.

If you'd like to clean up your original revision so that it has proper grammar and adheres to WP:TONE, I'm happy to reevaluate. Or if you need help doing so, you can post what you'd like to add here and I'll let you know what I think. DonIago (talk) 15:40, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Jordan Baker

People claim that Jordan Baker is a professional golfer. In the 1920s there were no woman professional golfers and the upper-class Buchanans would not have associated with professional golfers. It was a lowly trade then. Professional golfer[28] The first woman professional golfers played in the 1930s:Helen Hicks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.240.228 (talk) 14:45, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

If the book claims that she is a professional golfer, then that's what we should declare her to be. If sources have noted that this is at variance with historical fact, that may be worth noting. DonIago (talk) 17:20, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

The book says only that Jordan Baker "was a golf champion and everyone knew her name." I think that the "sources" that say she was a professional golfer are forgetting the differences between 1922 and now and assuming that golf champions must have been professional golfers then. Many of them probably relied on Wikipedia as justification for saying she was a professional golfer! In 1922 nearly all the golf championships were for amateurs only. In the USA golf was then an upper-class or upper-middle-class game. That's why people aspiring for success wanted to learn golf and join golf clubs. There's an irony - conscious or unconscious - in Nick's claim that "everyone knew her name". "Everyone" has a limited meaning there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.240.239 (talk) 10:36, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

She was Amelia Earhart but F. Scott couldn't quite figure how to put it . --Laurencebeck (talk) 06:45, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:The Great Gatsby/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

The article has copyright violation issues that need to be resolved. I was the person who got the article up to GA status. I believe it should be delisted and quickly. Jason Quinn (talk) 04:37, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

@Jason Quinn: Just a reminder that this is still open. AIRcorn (talk) 09:36, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Looking at the talk page the main issue with the plot seems to have been sorted. I ran Earwigs tool over it to be safe and it had a higher than I would like return. However most are fine as they are quoted or simple enough phrases. This is probably the dodgiest. We have our article vs a New York Times one (so unlikely they copied us)

• Despite this, he refused an offer of $10,000 for the serial rights in order not to delay the book's publication vs At the same time he refused an off of $10,000 for the serial rights in order not to delay the book's publication.
• By October, when the original sale had run its course, the book had sold fewer than 20,000 copies. Despite this, Scribner's continually kept the book in print; they carried the original edition on their trade list until 1946, by which time Gatsby was in print in three other forms and the original edition was no longer needed. vs Nor did the sales of "Gatsby" suggest any general recognition of its nature: by October, when the original sale had run its course, it was still short of 20,000. and Scriber's kept it in print; they carried the original edition on their trade list until 1946, by which time "Gatsby" was in print in three other forms and the original edition was no longer needed.

• The republication of Gatsby in Edmund Wilson's edition of The Last Tycoon in 1941 produced an outburst of comment, vs This was about the state of opinion when Fitzgerald's death late in 1940 and the republication of "Gatsby" in Edmund Wilson's edition of "The Last "Tycoon" in 1941 produced an outburst of comment.

These are not terribly bad, but given the plot copying I would not feel comfortable keeping this good unless they are resolved. AIRcorn (talk) 21:06, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Okay. Delist it shall be. Jason Quinn (talk) 23:41, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Jason Quinn (talk) 04:38, 5 December 2019 (UTC)