Talk:Carol Van Strum

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Theleekycauldron (talk) 01:50, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

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• Article history

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• ... that Carol Van Strum is an environmental activist whose work led to the cancellation of all 2,4,5-T registrations by the EPA? Source: [1]
  • ALT1: ... that Carol Van Strum is an environmental activist who kept more than 20,000 documents in her barn, revealing corporate and government cover-ups? Source: [2] and [3]
  • Comment: QPQ not required as this is author's first article and DYK nomination

Created by Balance person (talk). Nominated by Michael D. Turnbull (talk) at 22:50, 25 February 2022 (UTC).

• comment only - Interesting woman. Need to check tone and refs. "fraudulent or nonexistent studies, and decisions to continue marketing known carcinogens, mutagens and teratogens" may be true but we need a rock solid ref to note who says these things. ) 10:00, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Interesting life, on fine sources, welcome to DYK, Balance person! As Victuallers noticed, some references are missing, and the line mentioned above is not supported by the source given. Is it in a different one, or what did I miss. In the first hook, I don't like the abbreviation, which my tell the general reader nothing. I like the title of her book. ALT1: the sheer number is impressive, but is it interesting enough? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:57, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

GerdaArendt talk Thank you and Victuallers for the time you took to read about CVS and for your welcome. I have added a citation for the half-life bit. I have added a hedge, namely the phrase... it is said...before the part that is hard to prove because it involves reading and quoting many legal papers. Forgive my inexperience if the hedge is not enough. I am happy to learn.

• ALT2: ... that Carol Van Strum is an environmental activist, author of A Bitter Fog, who kept more than 20,000 documents in her barn, for more than 40 years, revealing corporate and government cover-ups? Source: [4] and [5] Balance person (talk) 14:11, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, - I'll look but not today. Well get there! What I like about her book is the full title which tells us what her focus is, - just the first half is a bit foggy ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:22, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: how's it goin'? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 02:22, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

thank you for the reminder - tough times, sorry. This works but is a bit complex, offering also a rephrased

ALT2a: ... that Carol Van Strum, an environmental activist who wrote the book A Bitter Fog, accumulated in her barn in more than 40 years 20,000 documents revealing corporate and government cover-ups?

better wording welcome, but I'm afraid that "kept more than 40y" is only true only for the oldest documents, no?

Thank you for raising awareness for this! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:18, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt, Balance person, and Michael D. Turnbull: I was going to promote this, but the hook is too awkward sounding for my liking. Here's some suggested ALTs below:

• ALT2b: ... that Carol Van Strum, an environmental activist who wrote the book A Bitter Fog, spent 40 years accumulating 20,000 documents that revealed corporate and government cover-ups?
• ALT2c: ... that Carol Van Strum, an environmental activist who wrote the book A Bitter Fog, accumulated 20,000 documents over 40 years that revealed corporate and government cover-ups?
• ALT2d: ... that Carol Van Strum, an environmental activist who wrote the book A Bitter Fog, spent 40 years researching corporate and government cover-ups and accumulated over 20,000 documents?
• ALT2e: ... that Carol Van Strum, an environmental activist who wrote the book A Bitter Fog, researched corporate and government cover-ups for 40 years and accumulated over 20,000 documents?

My suggestions remove the barn reference, to try to tighten up the language. It can be added back in if desired. Please post which ALT is best, or suggest others below. Z1720 (talk) 01:10, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

ALT2c to T:DYK/P2

Victuallers(Talk) and Gerda Arendt(talk) Thank you for the time you took to read about CVS and for your welcome. I have added a citation for the half-life bit. I have added a hedge, namely the phrase... it is said...before the part that is hard to prove because it involves reading and quoting many legal papers. Forgive my inexperience if the hedge is not enough. I am happy to learn. Balance person (talk) 16:49, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

WiG mini-review

Responding to the request for a 20 minute review. This is an interesting article, about an interesting person. However, I am quite concerned at some of the sources used here, which I would not personally accept as a GA reviewer. Addressing these will likely change enough of the prose that I don't want to get into a prose review at this time. Thanks for your work with this article, and if you want me to take a second look at it in the future, please feel free to ask. Detailed concerns are as follows. Vanamonde (Talk) 21:39, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much for taking the time to review CVS and for your tact. I am learning about GAs and so your comments are really useful. I will withdraw the article from consideration as, when I wrote it, I did a thorough search for sources and got the best that I could. I will have a look around and see if I can find a candidate more likely for an upgrade! Balance person (talk) 09:26, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

• [1] (Van Strum 2021) is by the subject. As such it's not independent, and should only be used with inline attribution or for non-contentious material.
• [3] (Court ruling) is a primary source; it shouldn't be used for contentious material, nor for synthetic claims.
• [7] (Toxic docs) does not seem reliable.
• [8] (IMDB) is known not to be reliable.
• [9] (LCCR) is a community advocacy organization; I see no indication that it would be considered reliable.
• [12] (CELDF) has the same concerns as [9].
• [16] (birthdefects.org) I'm unfamiliar with this source, but it also appears to be an advocacy group, whose reliability needs to be established before they can be used.

Vanamonde (Talk) 21:39, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Newspapers.com sources

@Balance person: I have access to Newspapers.com through the Wikipedia Library Card platform (I don't know if you have enough edits to qualify for your own access yet, but it's a great resource for future!). If you like, I could do a quick search and see if there are other archived news articles that could work as sources for this article. Best, Alanna the Brave (talk) 12:35, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your great and kind idea. Yes, please. I didn't know there was such a thing as WLC and I am uncertain how to count up my edits. Is there a way of finding out if I qualify? Absolutely everything seems to be recoded on wikipedia so it is probably a case of my finding the right button somewhere!Balance person (talk) 13:04, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

@Balance person This page is the portal for library. You currently meet some requirements but as you only have ~300 edits, not yet the "500+" required. One way to find out a summary of all you have done is to click on the "Contributions" link (next to your "Watchlist" link) and then at the very bottom of that page there's an "Edit count" link which gives that key information plus much more. In the meantime, it looks as though @Alanna the Brave's offer is the way to go. Mike Turnbull (talk) 13:35, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Brilliant, thank you! I have just found out all about myself! I knew it must be somewhere! Balance person (talk) 13:43, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

@Balance person: I'll set aside some time to check the newspaper archives soon (might be Monday), and I'll post links to any useful-looking articles here on the talk page. Glad to help, Alanna the Brave (talk) 15:09, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

@Balance person: Here are a few archived articles involving Van Strum: [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11] Alanna the Brave (talk) 19:22, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you very much Alanna the Brave for your careful and fast work. I have added most of the helpful extra citations you found. I am not sure though that they answer the comments of Vanamonde about possibly unreliable sources. So I think I still have to withdraw the article from GS submission. It appears that I simply don't know enough yet about sources. But thank you very much for your time and trouble. Balance person (talk) 09:03, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

No worries @Balance person: this article may be more of a long term project as you pick up new sourcing skills, and that's totally okay. Feel free to drop me a line on my talk page if you have any future questions I can help with. Alanna the Brave (talk) 13:38, 11 October 2022 (UTC)