Talk:JC's Girls/GA2

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Prhartcom (talk · contribs) 22:52, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I'd be happy to undertake this review. Please give me some time to get started. I wish to say I have the highest respect for the previous reviewer and will certainly be carrying aspects of that review over. Cheers. Prhartcom (talk) 22:52, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose is "clear and concise", without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:

   See below.

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   B. Citations to reliable sources, where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Reviewer's comments

1a

• Lede assumes we know the definition of the word Christian. It needs to be mentioned explicitly and immediately, probably in the first sentence, with a link provided. Same with first sentence of the article body
• "Theresa Scher—a former stripper and call girl—and social worker Sheri Brown founded" : What do you think of: "Former stripper and call girl Theresa Scher and social worker Sheri Brown founded"
• "for free" : a little too colloquial; can you rephrase
• "was not a Christian" : I wonder if "was not religious" is even better; it may describe his personality even more accurately; also, shouldn't it be present tense
• I was surprised that the term "sex industry" was not mentioned very early in the article body such as in the third sentence (it appears in the sixth sentence); this may be fine, but when it appeared I felt like it should have been mentioned and linked earlier
• JC's girls is referred to as "it" then referred to as "they"; pick one and stay consistent (may possibly need to humanize the organization more by saying "the women volunteers of JC's Girls" or similar); check entire article for this
• "help them in transitioning out of it" : perhaps "help them transition out of it"
• The word "there" followed by the verb of the sentence is often a sign of weak writing. Search for every occurrence of the word "there" and decide of the sentence could be rephrased to be stronger without it. E.g. consider changing "there are Christians who" to "Christians are nearby who" or similar; check entire article for this (I count five occurrences of "there" followed by a verb in this article)
• The word "having" followed by a past-tense verb: consider dropping the "having" and making the verb have the "ing" form instead, e.g. "having appeared" : "appearing", "having lost" : "losing", "after having converted ... and having left" : "after converting ... and leaving"
• The comma followed by "and" is often redundant and incorrect grammar; instead the comma should often be dropped (unless this is the close of a list of items). When writing a sentence we do not insert a comma just to indicate this is a moment where we would pause if we were speaking the sentence. The "and" alone is usually sufficient without a comma before it. Check entire article for this and consider each occurrence
• "she converted to Christianity ... although no one attempted to tell her about Jesus" : This is an odd statement for a few reasons: 1) I didn't think it was possible to do the first without the second 2) it implies that the article will soon inform us that this issue in her life will be corrected, but the article never returns to this 3) "Albee suggested that they start telling other strippers about Jesus" is not possible because "they" don't know about Jesus. Suggest dropping the troublesome phrase
• "invited women from other churches in the area to join JC's Girls, and approximately 90 churches responded with interest" : I'm confused: We were just talking about women in the sex industry who were being evangelized to and who began responding to JC's Girls, so who are the "women" from this sentence who are "to join"; I was naturally assuming the sex industry women. If it is instead church women who are joining, this may need to be rewritten to properly introduce and differentiate them from the other women
• "in December" : remind us that it is still 2005
• "had a booth" : find a better word than "had"
• I assume the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo is in Riverside, the name of this section, if not please say location
• "strip club booth" : Do you mean "strip club"; would also help remove redundancy; not sure what is the definition of this term otherwise
• "wished to take pictures with the JC's Girls volunteers, and Veitch was interviewed" : Separate into two sentences after "volunteers"
• "booth had received visits from thousands of men who read about the gospel there" : I suppose it would be men now that I think about it as probably no women attend the convention, but it is jarring to suddenly learn that only men were affected. I expected to learn that generic people were affected by the JC's Girls booth; perhaps change to this unless the idea of men only is properly introduced. Also, it was odd to learn that they "read" about the gospel there at the booth instead of "hear" about the gospel there; how did they read it, did the men/people approach the booth, were handed a Bible or something to read; or perhaps you mean they read about JC's Girls on the XXXchurch.com website; this may need to be reworded to be clearer
• "become more physically fit to show that she could still be working in the sex industry and that the organization's message is not motivated by jealousy" : The sentence would be stronger, allowing us to focus on the important "not motivated by jealousy" phrase, if the "she could still be working in the sex industry" phrase is dropped; reading about Veitch considering returning to the sex industry is quite jarring; it can be dropped because the next sentence, said in her own words, communicates this additional message better than this sentence does
• The section does not say why the Riverside chapter closes; do the sources provide this
• "at that year's AVN Adult Entertainment Expo" : Again, we are assuming the expo took place in Las Vegas, the name of this section, if not then clarify
• "Veitch's experiences in starting JC's Girls" : Drop the "in"
• "pornographic film actor" : change to "actress" (while keeping link to "actor"); also fix in photo caption
• "One Church for One Girl, which encourages churches to help women to leave the sex industry" : It's a different organization I know, but I thought the whole idea was to not encouraging women to leave it but to meet them where they are
• The section does not say why the Las Vegas chapter closes; do the sources provide this
• "Theresa Scher, a former stripper and call girl, was looking for a way out" : Please provide the location of Theresa Scher as she is doing this; I assume we are in San Diego (especially confusing since this sentence mentions Riverside)
• "allowed Scher to found" : It's accurate writing but, as we don't encounter this definition of the word "found" very often, consider changing to a more easily understood word such as "create" (besides, "founded" is in the next sentence so this would help with the redundancy)
• "She had been sexually abused ... she found" : Change one of those occurrences of "she" to "Brown" (probably the second occurrence) so we don't forget who we're talking about
• "had also had those experiences" : Change to "also had those experiences"
• "and have a prayer team praying for them while they are out" : "The "have" is weak; change to "while a prayer team is praying for them while they are out" (also remove the comma before this phrase)
• "as did George and his club's strippers" : Consider changing to "and George and his club's strippers returned to their counter-protesting" (also remove the comma before this phrase)
• "Within the a few months of founding JC's Girls" : Do you mean "Within the first few months of founding JC's Girls"
• "received messages through its website from pornographic film actors" : Do you mean "actors" or "actresses"
• "who said that JC's Girls had changed their lives and had introduced them to Christianity" : Consider dropping "and had introduced them to Christianity"; more powerful without
• "Because of the controversy surrounding JC's Girls" : Consider changing to more specific and less wordy "Because of this controversy"
• "in reaction against JC's Girls" : It is not clear enough why an organization would be founded "against" JC's Girls; the next two sentences begin to explain it but it still does not truly explain why/if they are "against" them
• Find a way to end the Reception section and the entire article with a statement of positive reception of the JC's Girls organization in order to end the article "on a chord", as I like to say—something that causes the reader to feel an emotion. There are some positive reception sentences already in this section so perhaps some simple restructuring is all that is needed

2b

• I'm doing a spot check of many of the references and they appear to be good. I found one reference that contained good information but was only being used for one single footnote (Michelle A. Vu "Film on Ex-Stripper Turned Preacher Stirs Controversy") where elsewhere you use multiple number of footnotes per source. And it is not required, but I tend to go a step further and use multiple number of sources per footnote; I wish you would consider doing that
• Please provide the page number for each of your book references; just providing the entire book for a citation is not good enough (I believe you know this). This includes citations from Grecco 2007 (the page has not yet been supplied) and Prejean 2009 (one of the two pages has not yet been supplied)

6b

• Hey, the photo of Veitch in the Heather Veitch article is a more "flattering" photo and also has the JC's Girls logo behind it; why not use that one and ditch the one in this article that the previous reviewer's friend had a problem with

Summary

This is an extremely interesting article and I believe it would rock the main page. The research for this article appears to be excellent. Great work on it, Neelix. I look forward to seeing your improvements to the article following this review and reading your responses to my comments. Cheers. Prhartcom (talk) 13:17, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the review and the encouragement, Prhartcom! They are much appreciated. I have implemented most of your suggestions with only a few exceptions:

• I retained the phrase "was not a Christian" because I don't want to depart from the relevant source, which simply refers to DiGiorgio as "not a Christian"; he may have been religious but an adherent of another religion. I kept the past tense because I don't wish to presume that DiGiorgio continues to not be a Christian; the source was written in 2006, and plenty of things could have happened to him since then.
• I removed all the extraneous commas you mentioned except one: the one in the sentence beginning with "The peace treaty..." In this case, the comma is important because it prevents the sentence from being ambiguous. Without the comma, the sentence could be taken to mean that the church's members only resumed picketing after George and his club's strippers returned to their counter-protesting, and the sources don't make this claim.
• I have retained the word "actor" instead of "actress" because "actor" has become the politically correct word to use in reference to both men and women. I can make this change if you feel strongly that readers will be confused, but I think it good practice to avoid female-specific occupation names wherever possible.
• Unfortunately, I have not been successful in finding any sources that explain why the defunct chapters closed. My best guess is that the Riverside chapter closed because it was left leaderless when Veitch moved to Las Vegas and that the Las Vegas chapter closed because it was left leaderless when Veitch resigned from the organization. Beyond their mere existence and the fact that they no longer exist, I have been able to find no information at all about the Austin and Sioux Falls chapters.

I believe that I have made all the other changes you recommended, but if there are others that I have not made, or not made sufficiently, please let me know. I would also be glad to continue the discussion with you about the four items on which I have not taken action. Thanks again for the thorough review. Neelix (talk) 18:50, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Neelix, Thanks for making all the changes and these exceptions are fine. I just completed re-reading the article and it looks good. Did you notice I added a new section of review above. Let me know when that is done and I believe we're good to go. Prhartcom (talk) 18:58, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate your comments relating to citations, Prhartcom. I haven't added multiple citations per footnote because I believe that it makes it more difficult for readers to ascertain which part of the relevant sentence has been taken from which source. I know that you and I have different methods of going about citations, and I can understand that you have reasons for preferring your methods. I tend to think both can coincide on separate Wikipedia articles in the same way that some articles are written in Australian English and others in Canadian English, etc. If there is any information in the Christian Post source you think should be included in this article that isn't already, please let me know. Both of the Prejean page numbers are already included; one is page 22 and the other is page x. Books often include both Arabic and Roman numerals to differentiate between the body text and the preface, as in this case. The Grecco book is unpaginated and therefore no page number can be provided. I hope this clarification satisfies your concerns. Please let me know if it does not. Neelix (talk) 20:02, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Ah, that explains it! I honestly was starting to think you had forgotten to add the page numbers, placing some sort of place holders for yourself ("page x", etc). I was surprised that I was finding myself having to point this out to you, so now your explanation makes more sense. As long as we are doing everything we can to help others who need to locate the passages in the books of the bibliography. And I wasn't insisting on multiple references per footnote, especially for a GA, it was just a suggestion; something I believe is good practice. In that case, this article is good to go, I am very happy to say. What an enjoyable and positive experience this was, reading about this organisation, which I really hope succeeds. Congrats on this GA! Prhartcom (talk) 20:17, 15 March 2015 (UTC)