Talk:How Far I'll Go

Story of composition drawn from Miranda interview with Dinner Party Download

I just reverted User:Cornerstonepicker's attempted rewrite of my edit for several reasons. First, the source, Dinner Party Download, is a famous radio show in the United States. It's syndicated by American Public Media to public radio stations nationwide, and a glance at the episode list shows that nearly every episode features one or more internationally renowned celebrities. Second, every one of my statements in the edit was a neutral restatement of Miranda's interview responses. I was trying to capture the intrinsic meaning of his interview responses without risking an accusation of violating copyright or having to wrap every sentence with quotation marks as a direct quote. --Coolcaesar (talk) 18:42, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@Coolcaesar: "In contrast, "How Far I'll Go" expresses a deeper, richer message" "Moana's struggle with the irresistible impulse to explore beyond the reef notwithstanding her genuine love for her island, her family, and her people". Well you shouldn't have. This fails WP:NEUTRAL, WP:SUBJECTIVE. Cornerstonepicker (talk) 01:40, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

It sounds like you didn't actually read the source cited. Why don't you do that first? --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:03, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Any response? The fact that you didn't read the source speaks for itself. For example, you put quotation marks (which I had to pull out) around text that was clearly paraphrasing on my part.

Also, the sentences you deleted on the grounds that they are non-neutral merely paraphrase the three paragraphs in the cited transcript that start with the words "I actually wrote a first draft of the song."

It really looks like you did not read the cited text, watch the movie, and listen to the words that Miranda actually wrote, which means you are in no position to complain as to what is neutral or non-neutral. Or if you did do that, then you were probably not trained properly in close reading. Notice how Miranda talks about finding the "key insight" that made "How Far I'll Go" into a "more complicated" song that was more true to his own experience, and how he talks about how the message of the song is that she loves so many things about where she is, but the voice telling her to go explore is still there anyway. That's the text that I was accurately paraphrasing. --Coolcaesar (talk) 21:02, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

No response after 10 days. I am reverting the text back to the prior version. In the future, please review sources cited before revising or commenting on text. And please work on your close reading technique---it is, after all, the fundamental method of modern literary criticism, and not that difficult. --Coolcaesar (talk) 11:28, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

@Coolcaesar: Should have tried "@Cornerstonepicker:" Anyway, "In contrast, "How Far I'll Go" expresses a deeper, richer message" It is written affirmatively, it's not a citation, therefore WP is saying the song is deeper and richer. Same thing in "He was well aware". WP is free but it's still an encyclopedia, that sounds straight out of some magazine article. And that story he's telling that he "locked himself", happened according to him. Countless articles here use "According to" before a story told by the subject. Cornerstonepicker (talk) 23:21, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

It looks like you have no training in how to use quotation marks in English. Please see the Manual of Style section: "Quotations must be verifiably attributed, and the wording of the quoted text should be faithfully reproduced. This is referred to as the principle of minimal change." This principle is drilled into students worldwide in English composition courses: do not use quotation marks unless you intend to imply that the text inside the marks is quoted verbatim, and if you have to modify the text to make it fit your own essay's grammar, always mark the changes with brackets.

If you disagree with my paraphrasing as non-neutral or taking a step too far with reasonable inferences from the source material, then challenge specific words or phrases on the article's talk page. But it is grossly inappropriate to mark paraphrasing with quotation marks that imply that such terms exist in the cited article.

It also looks like you do not understand that paraphrasing is entirely acceptable when the word choice is supported by the cited text. In both sources, Miranda repeatedly implies that he was driving at a deeper meaning with his second attempt, as anyone with basic training in close reading would promptly recognize. Also, in the Dinner Party Download transcript, Miranda talks about how he was trying to not write another "Let It Go." The entire point of paraphrasing is to convey the ideas stated in the cited text without quoting it directly. --Coolcaesar (talk) 04:07, 14 March 2017 (UTC)