Talk:John Williams/GA1

GA review

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.

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Nominator: Charlie Faust (talk · contribs) 15:27, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Aza24 (talk · contribs) 03:32, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Looking at this now. – Aza24 (talk) 03:32, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

I'm afraid this article still needs substantial work to meet GA status. And this work, I strongly believe, is outside the scope of a typical GAN, particularly in terms of "address[ing] the main aspects of the topic"; "reliable sources are cited inline" and "Verifiable with no original research" (all aspects of the Wikipedia:Good article criteria). If you wish to pursue this further, which I hope you do, you need to entirely redo the sourcing, which has major verfibility issues, and almost no use of the main academic surveys on Williams life or music.

I would also recommend a PR as a starting point. Then, I would recommend posting on the talk pages of editors who edit topics in film music and music generally, requesting comments on said PR. I have left some comments below to get you started, but for the time being I will have to fail this nomination. The article is moving in the right direction, but not ready for GAN. – Aza24 (talk) 04:28, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Sourcing

While it is certainly true that sourcing requirements for GAN are much more lax than FAC, I don't think this article can really excuse certain omissions.

• Aside from two "award list" sources, out of 181, only seven sources are cited more than once—and of those, only 3 are cited more than twice. This is not really how we're supposed to write articles: sources come first, then we include the information used in them. At the moment, it quite appears that information was written/formulated first, and then sources used to support them.
• There are almost no book sources. Williams is one of the most accomplished composers in the history of film music.
  • The Film Music of John Williams (2021) is cited only once, and without a page number.
  • Another, Barton, Tom. A Musical Biography of John Williams is also used only once, and without a page number
  • Another journal article, Scheurer 1997, which seems like a great source, is also only cited once, and without a specific page number
• There are at least five major surveys of John Williams music in the further reading section, and none of them are used even once.
• The premier encyclopedia of music, Grove, is not used once
  • Grove lists many articles on Williams's music—none used here
• There are a lot of unreliable sources used throughout. Examples include "Commentary track, Superman: The Movie"; Twitter; "John Williams Fan Network" (used at least thrice); "JWfan.com"; Notablog; Broadway World; Mugglenet; MyTempo; Film Buff Online etc. Some of these sources, like MuggleNet, cover large swathes of text without additional citations.

Spotchecks

There are major, and repeated sections that are not verified in their corresponding sources.

• The MuggleNet paragraph (which needs a different source, anyways), for instance, does not cover Hedwig's Theme", Williams scored the first three film adaptations of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and much of this paragraph
• The Knight, Michael NYT source does not cover 1983, Williams never met Fiedler in person but spoke to him by telephone season to presenting his new compositions for The Empire Strikes Back
• The attached MyTempo source does not cover the line Williams has written many concert pieces, including a symphony; a sinfonietta for wind ensemble; a concerto for horn written for Dale Clevenger, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's principal horn
• under Williams with soprano Cynthia Haymon not supported

These are just the first four random sections I checked, and not a single one was even close to covering the full content. I am under the impression that there are probably dozens of other instances like this.

Music

John Williams is a composer, with musical styles and trademarks, techniques and harmonic preferences. There is no general discussion of this within the article. The lead says things like "His style blends romanticism and impressionism with complex orchestration" — but that has no relation to the actual article content. See the example section in Bernard Hermann, for instance (although this example is quite poorly sourced)

• The "Compositions" section is simply a detailed list of his classical composition. There is no discussion of their musical content, their reception, interesting or innovative elements of them etc.
• The music content is thoroughly spread out between different films, and makes it difficult for readers to acertain anything conrete about his music. It doesn't help that most of the content typically addresses his influences, rather than the actual music
• Consulting many of the sources above will make this an easy process. The Grove article, for instance, is rich with this kind of commentary, furthering suggesting it is crucially WP:DUE for this article.

Other issues

There are quite a few other issues that extend past small prose or structural problems

• There are way too many quotes in this article—I counted nearly three dozen
• The WP:LEAD is designed to summarize the whole article, but doesn't touch on "Early life and education" or his early career
  • Also in the lead: an entire paragraph devoted solely to his awards seems quite excessive, and doesn't really impart much information to the reader. He won all these things—so what? Was he influential to other film score composers? What is his musical style like? etc. Much more pressing questions for the lead
• The list of compositions is completely uncited, and really should be removed entirely, since there is a seperate list of compositions article
• The "Awards, recognition and legacy" is extremely excessive, especially when the List of awards and nominations received by John Williams exists. It doesn't really use WP:Summary style at all—look at how short the equivalent section on Nelson Mandela#Orders, decorations, monuments, and honours is, despite having over 250.
• There is nothing on William's legacy, influence on film music, students(?) etc.

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.