维基百科:修缮评价章节

书作、影视、游戏条目本应通过评价章节,归纳总结媒体和业内人士的观点。但中文维基条目该节常常欠奉,即便有也常是不加组织的堆砌引文。不少编辑渴望改善该节但没有头绪,这时来参考下文的步骤说明,就能对评价章节的写法有所把握,不用为如何组织繁杂的观点而头晕脑胀。

  1. 敲定组织方式,以引言填充框架。该方法为英文维基百科电子游戏专题所推荐,其编辑Czar还常用隐藏注释在段前标明范围。这种做法不但亮明了条目结构,更是告诉其他编者条目结构。如果一时想不出条目架构,则可参看同类优特条目。
  2. 每段都有总起句概括主旨。正如下文例子所示,总起句不必复杂。可试问自己:若要给其他编辑解释段落主旨,我该怎么说?在完成下文的第3步后,请再回头检查总起句是否还恰如其分。通览评论找出代表性评价前,切勿轻下“普遍好评”等结论,小心原创研究。
  3. 以断言为论据,提出论点,证明各段目标。请把自己当设计师而非装配工,你不止要安排评论展示顺序,还要决定用哪些评论支撑段落论点。注意事项:
    • 少写“A称B”。像“约翰·史密斯称‘它是档好节目,我喜欢’,玛利亚·卡尼萨雷斯称‘这是我今年看过最好的节目’”这般罗列,读者很快就会厌倦。彻底避免固然不现实,但校订时可借鉴不同表述方法。
    • 变换句子节律。条目评价章节有个常见病,句子长度或结构单一,文章单调乏味。编者可参考其他条目,实现两个基本目标:一是句子长度错落有致,二是直接引言、间接引言和改述交替并用。
    • 无需巨细靡遗。6篇评论都表达观点X时,编者只用陈述X是普遍看法,无须一一点名。
    • 直接引言莫泛滥。和加工提炼原文相比,堆砌引言诚然省力不少,只不过,论点鲜明才是编者的任务。能改述则改述,引言是点缀,不是偷懒工具。

案例

下方评价章节示例展示了上述步骤的应用。欢迎您一起补充案例——可以是完美完成的评价章节,也可以是改进前后的对照案例。最好能举不同类型作品(电子游戏、书、电影等),方便各领域编辑参照。

案例1:黑暗的左手

以下四段文字译自英文版黑暗的左手条目评价章节,这些文字出自优秀编辑之笔。可以看到即便是优秀编辑也会有问题:

The Left Hand of Darkness received overwhelmingly positive critical responses when it was published. It won both the Nebula Award, given by the Science Fiction Writers of America, and the Hugo Award, determined by science fiction fans. In 1987, Locus ranked it number two among "All-Time Best SF Novels", based on a poll of subscribers. By 2014, the novel had sold more than a million copies in English alone. The Paris Review stated that "No single work did more to upend the genre's conventions than The Left Hand of Darkness."

Algis Budrys praised the novel as "a narrative so fully realized, so compellingly told, so masterfully executed." He found the book "a novel written by a magnificent writer, a totally compelling tale of human peril and striving under circumstances in which human love, and a number of other human qualities, can be depicted in a fresh context." Budrys would later describe Left Hand as an influence upon his own writing. Darko Suvin, one of the first academics to study science fiction, wrote that Left Hand was the "most memorable novel of the year."

Harold Bloom listed The Left Hand of Darkness in The Western Canon (1994) as one of the books in his conception of artistic works that been important and influential in influencing Western culture, saying that "Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time". Bloom said in 1987 that Left Hand was Le Guin's "finest work to date," and that critics had generally undervalued the book. Charlotte Spivack stated that Left Hand established Le Guin's status as a major science-fiction writer.

Suzanne Reid wrote that at the time the novel was written, Le Guin's ideas of androgyny were unique not only to science fiction, but to literature in general. Donna White stated that Left Hand was one of the seminal works of science fiction, as important as Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, which is often described as the very first science fiction novel. Left Hand has been a focus of literary critique of Le Guin's work, along with her Earthsea fiction and utopian fiction. The novel was also a personal milestone for Le Guin, with critics calling it her "first contribution to feminism." It was one of her most popular books for many years after its publication.

我们看到文章多处都有“A称B”问题:“巴黎评论认为……阿尔吉斯·布得利斯称赞……哈罗德·布鲁姆将之列为……布鲁姆称……夏洛特·斯皮瓦克称……苏珊娜·瑞德写道……唐纳·怀特认为……”。不管是用词还是节律角度,消除重复都绝非易事。

Step one: look for natural groupings of the comments -- do some of them seem to be similar in some way? Reading through the above, there's a fairly natural breakdown into three categories:

第一步:寻找意见的天然类别——是否有意见在某方面观点类似?通读上文后,可以很自然的将内容归为三类:

  • 成功 -- 所获奖项、售出册数
  • 赞扬 -- 引言和报道援引称赞该书
  • 影响 -- 该书已影响了其他作品

Grouping the quotes in paragraphs based on this breakdown isn't enough, though. If you want the reader to feel as though you're communicating with them, and not just passing the quotes to them on a tray for them to assess, you need to give each paragraph a position in the narrative. Here the basic narrative is:

Narrative

  • The book was very successful, won awards, and sold lots of copies.
  • People said nice things about it.
  • It influenced a lot of other writers.

The narrative is not at all the same as the category list above it. The category list is just a list of nouns and definitions; the narrative is a series of assertions about the book; and even at this short length it feels like a narrative of the reception, rather than a list. Within each item more can be done to make the narrative flow, though. For the second point, the praise section, here are the sentences I think should be included:

  1. The Left Hand of Darkness received overwhelmingly positive critical responses when it was published.
  2. Algis Budrys praised the novel as "a narrative so fully realized, so compellingly told, so masterfully executed." He found the book "a novel written by a magnificent writer, a totally compelling tale of human peril and striving under circumstances in which human love, and a number of other human qualities, can be depicted in a fresh context."
  3. Darko Suvin, one of the first academics to study science fiction, wrote that Left Hand was the "most memorable novel of the year."
  4. Harold Bloom listed The Left Hand of Darkness in The Western Canon (1994) as one of the books in his conception of artistic works that been important and influential in influencing Western culture. saying that "Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time". Bloom said in 1987 that Left Hand was Le Guin's "finest work to date," and that critics had generally undervalued the book.
  5. Charlotte Spivack stated that Left Hand established Le Guin's status as a major science-fiction writer.

Step 2: What's the argument of this paragraph? It's a list of statements that praise the book. (1) is a strong opening sentence and it could work well where the original writer had it, at the top of the whole section. It can serve as the introduction to the "success" paragraph just as well as to the "praise" paragraph. That means we'll need a new opening sentence -- perhaps "The book has been widely praised". That will do for an initial pass; we can revisit after organizing the remaining material.

Step 3: Design the paragraph's internal structure. If we look at the candidate sentences, one of the critics is different from the others: Budrys is primarily known as an sf writer; the others are academic critics. Let's make that a point of comparison: we can give Budry's opinion first, pointing out that it's that of a fellow writer, and then move on to the critics. The Suvin and Spivack quotes are pretty straightforward. The Bloom quotes are quite substantial but are given in reverse chronological order, but if that can be fixed the Bloom quotes would be a good conclusion to the paragraph. That puts Suvin and Spivack in the middle. Then for the Bloom, if we start with "In 1987 Bloom said" we can go on with "he followed this by saying Y and Z", which provides a little more connective tissue; here "followed this" is just a way to smoothly transport the reader to carry from one sentence to the next; there's really not much necessary connection between the content of Bloom's later and earlier sayings.

We also want to avoid the "A said B" problem. It can't be completely eliminated, but one way around it is to vary the verbs -- particularly avoiding "stated", which is overused and never sounds natural. These are generally opinions and assertions from academics and reviewers so we should use verbs that help convey that -- "considered", "argued", "regarded", "asserted" and "makes the claim" are examples. Verbs like "stated", "said", "wrote", and "declared" have no such connotations and give less traction to the narrative of the paragraph, which is the accumulation of like-minded opinions; it's often necessary to include verbs like that just for variety but they should not be the first choice.

Joining sentences together to vary the rhythm and help the flow also helps avoid the "A said B" problem. Here we can do that with the Suvin and Spivack statements; this also gives the sense of one statement reinforcing the previous one, which helps maintain the reader's interest.

Now let's revisit the opening sentence: "The book has been widely praised". To prefigure the structure of the paragraph, we can expand this with "...by genre commentators, academic critics, and literary reviewers"; then we should characterize Budrys as "fellow sf writer" so that the reader sees the structure of the first sentence is being followed. That sentence will carry him through the remaining comments, and the reader now sees these comments as supplying evidence for, and examples of, the critics and reviewers mentioned.

Rather than provide a similar analysis of the other two narrative paragraphs, here's the rewrite of all three. As usual, this is not "final" in any sense, and further improvements were immediately made by the primary editor of the article in question, but rather than claim this process can produce perfect prose I've left the paragraphs below as they were proposed on the article talk page.

The Left Hand of Darkness received overwhelmingly positive critical responses when it was published. It won both the Nebula Award, given by the Science Fiction Writers of America, and the Hugo Award, determined by science fiction fans. In 1987, Locus ranked it number two among "All-Time Best SF Novels", based on a poll of subscribers. The novel was also a personal milestone for Le Guin, with critics calling it her "first contribution to feminism." It was one of her most popular books for many years after its publication. By 2014, the novel had sold more than a million copies in English alone.

The book has been widely praised by genre commentators, academic critics, and literary reviewers. Fellow science fiction writer Algis Budrys praised the novel as "a narrative so fully realized, so compellingly told, so masterfully executed." He found the book "a novel written by a magnificent writer, a totally compelling tale of human peril and striving under circumstances in which human love, and a number of other human qualities, can be depicted in a fresh context." Darko Suvin, one of the first academics to study science fiction, considered Left Hand the "most memorable novel of the year", and Charlotte Spivak regards the book as having established Le Guin's status as a major science-fiction writer. In 1987 Harold Bloom described The Left Hand of Darkness as Le Guin's "finest work to date", and argued that critics have generally undervalued it; Bloom followed this up by listing the book in his The Western Canon (1994) as one of the books in Bloom's conception of artistic works that have been important and influential in influencing Western culture. In Bloom's opinion, "Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time".

Critics have also commented on the broad influence of the book. Writers such as Budrys have cited it as an influence upon their own writing, but more generally it has been asserted that the work has been widely influential in the science fiction field, with the Paris Review claiming that "No single work did more to upend the genre's conventions than The Left Hand of Darkness", and Donna White, in her study of the critical literature on Le Guin, arguing that Left Hand was one of the seminal works of science fiction, as important as Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, which is often described as the very first science fiction novel.