Talk:The Troubles of a Gnome/GA1

GA review

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Nominator: Piotrus (talk · contribs) 15:02, 24 November 2025 (UTC)

Reviewer: LEvalyn (talk · contribs) 00:52, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

I will take on this review! I usually prefer to make small prose edits directly myself (for a little less back-and-fort), but of course as always you should feel free to discuss or revert any of these that you don't consider improvements. Looking forward to the article! ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 00:52, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Comments

• Typically, the plot synopsis would be the first or second section in the article -- would you consider moving it earlier? (optional suggestion for flow) ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 01:29, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• Right now, reception and analysis are bundled together, and essentially summarize chronologically the major works about this book. That works reasonably well and satisfies the GA criteria for breadth, but I personally am a big advocate for instead organizing information around the recurring topics that such sources bring up (such as beautiful language, Polish patriotism, educational use, etc). I have written out some advice on using reviews this way here. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 01:29, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

  I agree, and in my newer works I usually try to implement the latter system. If I take it to FA, I'll certainly revise it like that. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:41, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

• License is good for the one image. It looks like there's a PD photo of the author available as well which might be nice to add, but there are no glaring/vital image omissions. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 04:40, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

  @LEvalyn Good point. File:ZOFIA_KOSSAK.jpg? And I found something else - commons:Category:Manor house of Kossak family in Górki Wielkie. That's the setting of the book. Any preferencse for which image(s) to add and where? (Also, instead of the photo, perhaps File:Tablica upamiętniająca Zofię Kossak na kościele Wszystkich Świętych w Górkach Wielkich.jpg/File:POL Górki Wielkie Kościół Wszystkich Świętych - tabliczka Zofii Kossak.JPG, given it's in the book location?) _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:29, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

  Yes, that's the photo I was thinking of. But your finds are even better!! For the house I'd say to use File:Dwor_Kossakow_-_Gorki_-_Ziemia_Cieszynska.jpg since I think that's how the building looked when she was there? And for the author, whichever you like. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 06:23, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

  Good idea, pics added (and a wikidata link to the manor, which probably is notable, but has no pl wiki article yet). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:01, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

Questions/suggestions

• Is footnote a (the one with In the English translation...) misplaced? It does not seem related to the illustrated editions, maybe it be
  • Thanks for moving the footnote, it is now in correct location (I fixed it in the pl original too). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:25, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• Why is Polish animated superproduction in italics? ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 01:29, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
  • Error in translating a pointless quotation, I think... fixed. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:33, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• where the author herself had moved at that time isn't really plot summary, and is more suited to a 'development' section of some kind. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 01:29, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
  • Done.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:41, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
• In general, the summary feels a little light on detail. Is it more of an episodic story, or does it have an arc? ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 01:29, 10 August 2026 (UTC)
  • The plot summary is based on what (relatively little, yes) I found about the main plot in the secondary sources. Would it be ok me to expand the plot summary with primary source (the novel itself), or is it against GA+ sourcing standard? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:42, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

    It's unusual compared to the rest of Wikipedia, but I'd say it's actually expected for the summary to be sourced to the book itself! Per WP:PLOTCITE the convention is for there to be no citations in the plot summary, with all info implicitly cited to the book. (Though I don't usually consider it necessary to remove citations to achieve that.) The key is to stick to the most uncontroversial, non-interpretive recap possible -- things 100% of readers would agree the book itself made clear. Some books make that hard to pull off but I'm guessing this one won't be such a puzzle. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 12:04, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

• I think Even before the war would be clearer with a specific date. Relatedly, this one sentence is the only information about the story's reception from before 2004: does Heska-Kwaśniewicz's work, perhaps, give more information about whether it was widely read or not before the 21stC? ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 01:29, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

  @LEvalyn Sadly, I couldn't find that out, although I expect there are more harder-to-find, offline sources, including reviews from back then. But, as I said, I wasn't able to locate other sources when I was writing the pl article a while back. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:28, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

  PS. After some digging, I was able to locate and summarize and cite an 1928 English language review of the English translation. It should help a little (again, I expect Polish ones exist but so far I haven't found them) _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:38, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

  Great find! And the article can't summarize sources you can't access, so that certainly satisfies me on breadth. I will proceed with the source checks etc next (probably in ~12 hours), it looks like all my prose concerns are addressed. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 12:06, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

• The source check below brought me to the quite pedantic quibble that none of the sources say the film was never completed. If we deleted that claim I suspect most readers would correctly infer that nothing ever came of the idea just from the lack of further info, which would be more strictly verifiable. Too pedantic? ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 05:13, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

  Hmmm. It's a tie between common sense and being helpful to the readers and arguably OR. Maybe we could ask for a WP:3O - any experienced reviewer you'd like to ping? And I also added archive to the DDTVN ref. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:38, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

  Sigh, a 3O is a reasonable suggestion, but also, so clearly a waste of time of any editor who came by to be the third person here. I think, let's let common sense carry the day. Happy to call the source check fully satisfactory, then. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 06:24, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

• This is outside my area of experience, so I tried to do some additional research to evaluate NPOV. (A patriotic tale of national identity, especially between the world wars, sets off some alarm bells.) One thing I found is that the "terribly evil" characterization attributed to a critic with according to Szot, Germans are depicted as "terribly evil" is actually him using a quote from the book. In the opening, the gnome is made magically young out of joy that Poland was Poland once again, just as it had been long, long ago... The Germans—terribly evil—had to return to their own land. Small wonder, then, that the old Polish house-sprite grew young again. (Machine translation of the Polish I found here.) I also get the impression that the 2021 educational curriculum thing has a broader political context, and that the author's background has more to discuss.

With that in mind, I think re-organizing the secondary sourcing thematically is no longer an elegance nice-to-have but a necessity, for the article to effectively convey the context. One of the tricky things about translating an article is that most enwiki readers will need a lot more 'unpacking' than plwiki readers. For this specific article, I get the impression that there should be a 'style' section talking about the beauty/difficulty of language element; a 'major themes' section talking about nationalism and about nature; and a 'reception' section with two sections, one for the 19thC and one for 2021. Regarding the author, I think a 'development' or 'background' section with a bit more context on her biography and the time period would be useful; for example, pointing out that Silesia had only recently become part of Poland. I'm seeing indications that this was the first of several works about Silesia and Polish national identity.

I am pretty sure that putting things in the right places like this, and fleshing out the synopsis to cover the full story in a more beginning-to-end fashion, will make the different perspectives on this book more legible and more balanced for readers. This goes pretty far beyond just translating the Polish article, but I do think some elbow grease would be adapt that article to enwiki's GA status here. I understand if you're not interested in going back to an older article for that level of reworking. ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 07:15, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

Give me a few days. I think I can reorganize the content, but I don't think I can add much more new material about the book (I think I added all that was useful, literary criticism-wise, already). I can add a bit more context-wise for non-Polish readers, that is a fair request. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:25, 11 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, I do think just reorganizing will do a lot of the heavy-lifting for clarity here, especially with a little bit of added context! ~ le 🌸 valyn (talk) 06:06, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

@LEvalyn Take a look at the rewrite. Note that as a consequence, a few points (primarily the curriculum-related criticism) appear in more than one section (they are relevant to both analysis of themes and discussion of reception). Feel free to shorten/reword if you have a idea how to do it (I tried my best...). Oh, and I updated the ref and content to note this is (was) still a required reading for 2025/2026. I've also expanded Inspirations into Background and Development _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:08, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Source check

This table lists 5 random passages from throughout the article (16.1% of 31 total passages). These passages contain 8 inline citations (21.1% of 38 in the article). Reference numbers refer to this revision. Generated with the Veracity user script.

Reference #	Letter	Source	Archive	Status	Notes
Zofia Kossak-Szczucka wrote the book for her children, Julka and Tadzio, who also appear in the story.
1	a	rebus.us.edu.pl		Y	Machine translation tells me this verifies.
In the early 2000s, Se-ma-for worked on a puppet film based on the book titled Maru – Tajemniczy Talizman (Maru – The Mysterious Talisman), directed by Jacek Łechtański. The film was described in the media as a planned Polish animated superproduction with over 50 puppet characters, but it was never completed.
10		filmweb.pl		?	Machine translation tells me this is good for several facts, including "over 20 sets and 50 puppet characters". However, naturally it does not verify the "never completed" part.
11		wprost.pl		?	Per machine translation, confirms several details, though it seems redundant with the other sources. Similarly, no way it would verify "never completed".
12		film.wp.pl		?	This seems to cover everything the first one didn't cover (e.g., the grant), except of course for "never completed".
That same year, a book titled Wokół „Kłopotów Kacperka góreckiego skrzata” Zofii Kossak: materiały dla nauczycieli przedszkoli i szkół podstawowych (Around "The Troubles of a Gnome" by Zofia Kossak: Materials for Preschool and Primary School Teachers) was published.
18		Cichoń, Danuta, ed. (2004). Wokół "Kłopotów Kacperka góreckiego skrzata" Zofii Kossak: materiały dl…		Y	Straightforwardly verified by its own bibliographic citation.
The book was included as required reading for grades 1–3 of primary school in 2021
19		dziendobry.tvn.pl		?	This link 404s. Not a problem since the next link verifies the needed info. It could be removed or you could look for an archive link.
20		prawo.pl		Y	This link works and verifies all the info.
and remained so in 2024/2025.
21		listalektur.pl		Y	I was able to replace the link with an archived version -- this URL now goes to the present 2026-7 list (which doesn't contain our little gnome any more).