Talk:William Hanna/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Lebanese descent

Someone added this to both him and Barbera (who is categorised as Sicilian American).

Any sources ?

-- Beardo 13:52, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

The 1910, 1920, and 1930 census has his father as half Irish, half English and his mother's parents from Tenn and Missouri. Questors 19:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Barbera is of Lebanese descent but I don't know about Hanna (Syrian origin from a town named Habnemra in Homs). Hanna is a fairly common name in Lebanon though, it means John, but I'm not sure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by PassTheYouth (talk • contribs) 17:49, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

On page 9 of his auto-biography, he says says his family is "a red-blooded, Irish-American family". There is no mention of any other ethnicity that I found. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:23, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

following some sources and references. http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Hanna where it is stated that Hanna is "Maternally Scottish and Paternally Lebanese" http://reachmetoo.blogspot.com/2008/06/im-lebanese.html http://www.qatarliving.com/node/87636?page=1 http://www.wellearnedbreak.com/destinations/l/lebanon/general-info/famous-people.html http://www.proud2blebanese.com/ Hanna is clearly a lebanese common Family name. Barbera's origin was always an issue since less articles have discussed that; however, one article in the Guardian news paper says he is of Lebanese origin. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1537372/Master-cartoonist-who-created-Tom-and-Jerry-draws-his-last.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.173.234.103 (talk) 14:05, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Barbera's ethnicity has nothing to do with Hanna. The lists above are not reliable sources. Simply because Hanna may be a Lebanese surname does not mean that William Hanna is of Lebanese descent. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 18:41, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

William Hanna FAC preps

I've taken this article from this to this, in preps for filing it for FAC. I could use some help now with:

  1. finding a free image of Hanna
  2. some good copyediting
  3. expanding the lead
and when that's done I'll unlink the repetitive links (things can change during ce, so I don't want to do now), then file for FAC.

Any help is greatly appreciated. — Rlevse • Talk • 02:50, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Some of the Career section overlaps and could be consolidated. For example, Puss Gets the Boot is mentioned in both paragraphs 3 and 4; Taft Productions is mentioned in both paragraphs 6 and 8. And how about breaking out his awards and recognition to a new section? — btphelps (talk) 02:40, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Consolidating, will look at that during more ce. Still adding raw data. — Rlevse • Talk • 12:21, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Awards list

I prefer the awards list to be written in prose form, rather than in a list. Bulletpoint lists are distracting, since they draw the reader's attention away from the prose. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 12:19, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, it also means we need to footnote each bullet rather than the paragraph, so I'm changing it back. — Rlevse • Talk • 12:21, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Distracting the reader from the prose? Are you saying that long blocks of prose are attractive? <BONG>
You are devoting hours of your personal time to this content. It appears to be a topic that you care about. I presume you actually want someone to read it. Research has shown time and again (see Jakob Nielsen's site Useit.com for studies) that web users prefer to scan rather than read. Long blocks of paragraphs have been shown to reduce readability and thus the likelihood that someone will actually plow through what you have so passionately devoted yourself to writing. You are visually discouraging the visitor from reading your work.
The Legacy paragraph is incredibly dense. The current readability (Gunning-Fog Index) for this paragraph is (6-easy 20-hard) 14.9, rating it above the Atlantic Monthly. Other scores:
Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text:
As a professional technical writer, I've learned it's the writer's job to do the heavy lifting and extra work on the back end to give the reader ready access to the content. Thus generous use of subheads, white space, short paragraphs, including bulleted lists, are recommended. Although Wikipedia positions itself as an encyclopedia, that doesn't mean it should be written so that the content is hard to understand.
In this instance, the list method communicates in a glance, and thus much more effectively, the vast array of awards Hanna won, which is really your intent anyhow -- without forcing the reader to read every single one.
As to the footnote issue, it's generally acceptable to footnote the lead-in paragraph rather than each item. Aren't there any Wikipedia standards about readability? Certainly there ought to be.
Let's remember, this guy wrote cartoons.
-- btphelps (talk) 17:26, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I'll work on copyediting when I'm done putting in the data. I'm not done with all the refs I found yet. I know legacy and career need work. Yes, I want this to be readable, but I also want to it make FA status. I have 15 featured items to my credit. — Rlevse • Talk • 17:37, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
You've done a tremendous amount of research. I know what it takes to put information like this together. Congratulations on a great effort. FA status requires long blocks of text? -- btphelps (talk) 17:49, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I have about 10 more refs to work in, then that'll be the time for some good copyediting. — Rlevse • Talk • 02:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm done adding refs and did a little copyedit. There seems to be no free image to use. We still need to work on copyediting and tweak the lead. See recent articles at WP:FA for examples of what FA calls for. As for the awards list or prose question, I've asked the FAC director about that. — Rlevse • Talk • 13:46, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

FYI, SandyGeorgia said to leave it in prose format. — Rlevse • Talk • 16:03, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
References are a bit light; some of the online refs are likely to be challenged, so prepare for it. The most egregious omission is Hanna's autobiography A Cast of Friends. [1] The Great Cartoon Directors may also have some material. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 17:05, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the edit and leads. I'm on it. Also, most every bit of info in the article is repeated in multiple refs. — Rlevse • Talk • 21:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Great Cartoon Directors doesn't talk about Hanna and Barbera. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:29, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Further reading: Why the obits here? There are plenty of obits in the main article, these seem redundant. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 13:03, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Simply more stuff for people to read. — Rlevse • Talk • 13:21, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Problematic refs

Here are a list of questionable refs that may not meet WP:RS:

  • Filmreference.com (ref #1 and #30): Not sure about this one. Could you establish how this meets WP:RS? :ALL NOW HAVE A BACK UP REF
  • Digital FX Media (ref #6): what makes this a reliable source? :ALL NOW HAVE A BACK UP REF
  • tomandjerryonline.com (ref #19 and #27): an unofficial fan site normally doesn't meet RS. :DONE
  • fundinguniverse (ref #29): They list their source as " International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 23. St. James Press, 1998." I recommend you just list this as the actual source. :DONE
  • top10cartoons.com (ref #35): what makes this a reliable source? :DONE Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 14:25, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I'll work on this. Most info is repeated elsewhere. — Rlevse • Talk • 14:33, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Done. — Rlevse • Talk • 21:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Some of these other ones are substandard too - the Time Warner PR piece, filmreference.com, allmovie (a tertiary source), Digital Media FX, etc. It shouldn't be hard to find better stuff - I mean, it's William Hanna. I'll dive around in Newsbank/JSTOR/etc. for some stuff... east718 // talk // email // 02:52, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Rm'd digitalmedia and filmreference. Narrowed usage of allmovie (it's quoted in other places). I disagree Time Warner is not a RS. It's a reputable company and they had obvious knowledge of the event. — Rlevse • Talk • 23:12, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, a PR piece is pretty much the nadir of objective reporting. R, I emailed you some stuff on Hanna; some of it's your run-of-the-mill obits with useful info thrown in, but I also dug up some mini-bios and a couple scholarly papers on him and his work. east718 // talk // email // 05:18, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll work on the info. I've added an additional ref with pictures of the TimeWarner actual ceremony, so there should be no doubt now. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

The use of Template:Rp

Random comment: this is the first time I've seen Template:Rp used in an article, and I must say I'm not a fan. It's also apparently discouraged. Under "Warning", the page states: "This template should not be used unless necessary. In the vast majority of cases, citing page numbers in the <ref ...>...</ref> code is just fine. This template is only intended for sources that are used many, many times in the same article, to such an extent that normal citation would produce a useless <references /> line or too many individual ones. Overuse of this template will make prose harder to read, and is likely to be reverted by other editors."

If the goal is to bring this article to FA-status, I suggest utilizing a more popular framework for book references. List them in full (i.e., "Hanna, William; Tom Ito (2000). A Cast of Friends. Emeryville, California: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-30680-917-6. Retrieved on August 18, 2008") in a separate section ("Sources"?) and then refer to them in shorthand in the inline citations along with corresponding page number(s). "Hanna (2000), 34", for example, works fine. I've found this setup to be less confusing, both as a reader and as an editor. Just a suggestion... María (habla conmigo) 13:54, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've heard several different opinions on this. For myself, I like RP because the page is right there and it cuts down multiple ref lines to just one in references. If I understand you correctly your suggestion would also make multiple refs in the references section. I don't find the rp system confusing at all. This reminds me of all the views on whether to use reflist or reflist|2. — Rlevse • Talk • 14:28, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
For me, personally, it's utterly confusing. The reader sees an inline citation, they click it, and it brings them to ref 1 in "References". To find the exact page number that supports the text, however, they must scroll back up. There is no problem with multiple citations from the same work; that's how academic footnotes are organized, after all. Again, current and past FAs tend to favor the system I described above, and this is the first time I've come across the RP template. I had no idea what the numbers even meant until I did a search. :)
Also, isn't RP for use with Harvard/Citation references? Because this article uses citation templates based upon APA, and ref styles are not to be mixed per the MOS, the two may not be compatible. We could ask Ealdgyth just to be sure, however? María (habla conmigo) 15:03, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Ealdgyth has already looked this over (see the PR page) and said nothing about RP. Also, Harvard and cite format get mixed in the same article all the time. SandyGeorgia has seen this format too and said nothing,ie, when Boy Scouts of America was up for FAC (it didn't make it for other reasons though). — Rlevse • Talk • 16:09, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Just in case, I asked Ealdgyth about this specific conundrum on her talk page. I'm only trying to help. María (habla conmigo) 16:31, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I honestly don't look at the format of the superscript numbers on FACs, unless they jump out at me. If you click the "edit" tab on the article, and scroll to the bottom where all the templates are listed, you'll see that it doesn't mix cite and citation. RP seems to be designed to give the Harvard style page numbers with the cite templates. As the template page says "This template (the name of which stands for "reference pages") is for appending Harvard referencing-style page numbers to Cite.php-generated inline reference citations." So, no its use isn't breaking the don't mix rule. Whether it's stylistically elegant is a editor style choice. I personally won't use it, I think it looks clunky, but it's not something that is against the MOS, so it is a valid choice. (This is a copy of a reply on my Talk Page, so yes, it's a repeat) Ealdgyth - Talk 16:33, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Cool, I'll cease and desist now. I agree that it's clunky, though. :) María (habla conmigo) 16:36, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to give my 2c.: I completely agree with María. This template is clunky, unintuitive, and all round a disaster. Please use any other system than this one! --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 18:15, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I feel Harvard is clunky. It creates unneeded cite lines in the ref section and you have to go looking around for the parent ref manually. With RP, you can click right to it and it only makes one line in the ref section. I asked SandyGeorgia, FAC director, about this and she said it's a legit format that is not a valid oppose at FAC. — Rlevse • Talk • 19:45, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
{{Rp}} is used in a number of articles and its use is documented at Wikipedia:Footnotes. If you have issues, please take it up on the talk page. The whole reference system is one hack after another, but so many editors are entrenched in their methods that trying to change it at this point is futile. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 20:48, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
{{Rp}} is not "documented" at Wikipedia:Footnotes; there's a mere reference to it there, is all. Most important, the purpose of the extra superscript numbers is not at all obvious to the reader. There is no other reference system in the world that duplicates superscript numbers in this way. This counter-intuitiveness and opacity is the main problem with this template. It should not be used. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 00:39, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
{{Rp}} was created by SMcCandlish directly in light of my whining (about the article Glossary of cue sports terms) that the only way to cite one work used 150 times and provide page numbers for transparent attribution, was to have literally 150 separate listing of the same reference each with a different page number appearing in the reference section. Now that would be clunky! It really is only for when you are citing to a fairly large number of different pages from a single work, such as was necessary in the glossary. I think it's an elegant solution to that problem but should only be used when the number of references becomes really burdensome in its absence.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
There are many other ways of dealing with this perceived problem. I'm in no way "entrenched" in one particular system. Use any: Harvard, MLA, APA. MLA, for instance, would not require multiple footnotes. (In fact, it wouldn't require any.) There are literally hundreds of styles available. Why make one up that uses a format not found elsewhere? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 00:39, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
It is used in other articles and approved for use here. You're simply not used to it. Until it's unapproved, it's a valid format to use. Your argument is simply WP:IDONTLIKEIT. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I've made a rather strongly worded comment about it at Template talk:rp and I'm quite prepared to oppose the mainpage featuring of this article if {{rp}} is kept. The invation of this reference format to solve the near-imaginary problem of having too many notes (WP:NOTPAPER anyone?) makes very little sense to me. And with the number of unique references in this article never exceeding 20 or so, an already strained argument collapses altogether. It seems to me as if WP:ILIKEIT is the only thing going for the format right now, and I don't see how that benefits our readers.
We offer ourselves immense freedom of choice as article writers with endless combinations of styles of grammar, tone, spelling and references. Extending this freedom to unintuitive, non-existent standards will obviously be detrimental to the legibility of articles, and to me that can't possibly be reasonable compromise. Besides that, none of this seems to have ever been supported by anything approaching widespread consensus.
Peter Isotalo 12:31, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
What is your solution? Here are the various ways to include page numbers:
Is there a FA that illustrates your preference? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:02, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
My personal preference is for shortened footnotes (recent examples can be found in Kronan (ship) and Mary Rose), without any use of reftemplates, but anything that follows actual real life standards closely enough would be acceptable. Overall, I don't see the any gain in avoiding any certain number of notes. The amount of redundancy can hardly be considered distracting and the common standard retains a measure of clarity that is invaluable. Using {{rp}} doesn't appear to achieve much other than to make the page references that much more difficult to interpret.
Peter Isotalo 13:49, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
Well, there you go. Giving us an idea on how to fix it is always better than just saying you don't like it. I'm not keen on those examples, as they mix standard footnotes, shortened footnotes and explanatory notes. Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a better example, as it uses only shortened footnotes. The shortened note list looks much better in columns than when it is mixed. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 19:00, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
Peter, you're the one saying IDONTLIKEIT, you flat out admit it. RP is a valid ref format on wikipedia and objecting on that basis is not a valid objection. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:24, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
Gadget, that's getting off topic. You're referring to a "pure standard" is a an entirely Wikipedian invention. I'm following the common real world standard by not keeping two sets of notes. That's not what this discussion is about, though. The problem here is the presentation of page numbers in a way that isn't clearly recognizable according to existing standards of referencing.
Rlevse, I have a frank concern that readers simply won't understand what this type of referencing means, or at very minimum will experience undue astonishment when reading them. Unless you actually want to avoid constructive critical discussion, please try not to reduce complaints to petty bickering about personal preferences.
Peter Isotalo 06:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
That's what you're doing you're just cloaking it. The bottom line is that this is a valid ref format and until that changes and a bot can change it to another format without making a mess objecting to it being used at all and/or using its usage to stop an article from being on the main page is baseless. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:06, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
(unindent) This complaint is not new and has been brough by several users, so it doesn't seem constructive to keep rejecting by putting it down to personal preferences. Insisting that everything is fine just because this particular template is not explicitly deprecated in guidelines is more or less begging for regulation against stuffing beans up your nose and instruction creep. If you really want to call it a "valid ref format" you should try harder to refer to actual consensus supporting it's use.
Peter Isotalo 12:09, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
Mirrors — Rlevse • Talk • 14:24, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Taft sale price

Some refs say the sale price was reported at $25 million, but the Barbera autobiography says it was $12, so I went with that. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:53, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Copy edit

I don't have the time right now, but this article could use a copy edit. Wish it had been checked over a bit more before appearing on the main page. Burpelson AFB (talk) 03:45, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Cost of sale

With this edit almost two years ago, Rlesve removed or relocated the cost of H-B (in TBS) to Time-Warner in '96, and it has stayed this way (... merged with Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros., in 1996 for an estimated) ever since. Any possibility that we could find out the correct costs? (Wee bit disappointing the article made it to the Main Page with this error untouched after this length of time.) Cheers, LindsayHi 06:35, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

See the "Taft Sale Price" thread, two threads above. — Rlevse • Talk • 10:06, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
I did see it; my point was that you didn't go with any price; the sentence is incomplete, a fragment. Currently the company was sold to Taft for $12m, then Taft sold to TBS for $320m, then TBS to Time-Warner for "an estimated." Estimated requires a value, yeah? Cheers, LindsayHi 10:43, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Legacy POV issue

The Legacy section is far too flattering to Hanna. Although his achievements were impressive, Hanna-Barbera is primarily known among cartoon aficionados for the cheapness and low quality of their limited animation, with some fans blaming them for the huge drop in quality from the Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons (unfairly, perhaps, since economic forces drove the move to cheapness). Here are a couple of examples,[2][3] and I think better could be found. A balanced view should include criticism as well as praise. John M Baker (talk) 15:40, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

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