Talk:Keith Sebelius

Keith Sebelius has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: June 1, 2020. (Reviewed version).

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A fact from Keith Sebelius appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 20 February 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Keith Sebelius voted against the War Powers Resolution, but supported capping the U.S. military at 400,000 troops overseas?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/February. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Keith Sebelius.

Wikipedia

His ethnicity?[edit]

Sebelius, by its suffix, would appear Dutch, Lithuanian or Finnish. Does anyone know of his ethnicity? Dogru144 (talk) 01:13, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.24.250.130 (talk) 13:36, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It has now been fixed. Good. -- Hoary (talk) 00:50, 17 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Letter to Nixon[edit]

I read in the article:

In October 1969 he asked for his name to be removed from a letter to President Richard Nixon asking for him to not rule out all military options in gaining peace with honor due to the North Vietnamese viewing it as a call of immediate surrender.

I couldn't make sense of this. It was sourced. I looked in the source. The source too was hard for me to understand, but eventually I thought I understood, and I reworded to:

In October 1969 he asked for his name to be removed from a letter to President Richard Nixon asking Nixon to point out to the North Vietnamese that the US would not rule out any military option in gaining peace with honor, due to the North Vietnamese viewing it as a call for immediate surrender.

I'm not entirely confident that I got this right. Some other editor(s) should read the source, and think. The editor should preferably be familiar with the letter (which I haven't seen) -- although it's imaginable that Sebelius disagreed with a draft that differed in some way from what was eventually sent, or that a misunderstanding arose in a hurried phone call, or any number of other complications.

If I did understand correctly, then my version is still confusing. I'd be inclined to reword it as something like:

In October 1969 he asked for his name to be removed from a letter to President Richard Nixon asking Nixon to point out to the North Vietnamese that the US would not rule out any military option in gaining peace with honor, as Sebelius feared that the North Vietnamese would view the letter as a call for immediate surrender and thus dismiss it out of hand.

But I'm reluctant to tinker any further. -- Hoary (talk) 00:17, 10 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, Jon698, Yoninah? A week has gone by; no response. The sole source that's now cited for this Nixon letter business is itself confused; so if there's no more lucid source available then I recommend simply deleting any mention of this. -- Hoary (talk) 23:30, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Keith Sebelius/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Naypta (talk · contribs) 17:44, 25 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	and worked for intelligence agencies in the Caribbean to detect German U-boats - were the intelligence agencies in the Caribbean, or was he working there? Which intelligence agencies would be helpful, if there are appropriate sources for it. Following World War II he served on the Almena city council and also as its mayor could use rephrasing, as the "its" in the second part of the sentence is unclear, and the timeframe is also unclear - did he serve as a councillor before he was mayor, or concurrently with being mayor? For instance, one way of rephrasing that might be "Following the end of World War II, he served as a councillor on the Almena city council, [and also/after which he] became mayor of the city." After facing no opposition in the Republican primary Sebelius defeated Vance Templeton could be usefully made clearer - who was Vance Templeton (I'm assuming a Democratic senate nominee?) and in what election did Sebelius defeat him - presumably the senate election? Boils down really to "defeated him in what", I'm assuming it wasn't a boxing match On July 18, 1973, he voted against the War Powers Resolution; after Nixon vetoed the bill he voted against the overriding of it on November 7 has too many uses of pronouns to be clear - "he voted against" presumably refers to Sebelius, but could also be understood to refer to Nixon by someone who is unfamiliar with US politics. the House voted to override Nixon's veto along with the Senate ought to be clearer in what it's saying, as again, someone unfamiliar with US politics could reasonably parse this as saying that the Senate was overridden by the House. "the House and Senate voted to override Nixon's veto" would help to clarify here.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	~~OurCampaigns.com appears to be user generated content. Is this correct? If so, it should not be used for election data in the way that it is in this article.~~ Having direct inline citations for each of the tables would be useful, so as to ensure that the references are clear (I know they are referenced, but I had to dig around the article to find the relevant references).
	2c. it contains no original research.	Minnie Peak as the name of his mother is not included in any of the references, as far as I can tell; references refer to her as Minnie Sebelius. During the 1976 presidential election, Senator Bob Dole was selected as Ford's vice presidential running mate; and had they won it would have resulted in Dole's resignation from the Senate and a special election is unsourced, as far as I can see. The next sentence is correctly and appropriately sourced, but this one isn't. (Update: the part here talking about a special election is still unsourced - the source says he might be appointed, not that he might be elected) In 1949, he married Elizabeth Adeline Roberts and had two children with her, R. Douglas Sebelius and K. Gary Sebelius, before his death in 1982 appears to be unsourced; sources do not state the year of marriage, and name Elizabeth as "Bette", also giving shorter names for the two children (see here and here). On January 11, 1981, a banquet was held in his honor that was attended by former President Gerald Ford and President-elect Ronald Reagan is unsupported by the sources, which say that they both sent telegrams to the banquet, but not that they were there.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	Given the claim made in the article that he lost both of the House of Representatives runs that he lost by narrow margins, it would be useful to state clearly the margin of the second run, in the same way that the margin of the first run is stated.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.

@Naypta: All comments in 1a, 2c, and 3a have been met. OurCampaigns is an allowed source and is used in hundreds of election and political pages. - Jon698 talk 11:41 26 May 2020 (UTC)
@Jon698: Thanks very much for addressing some of the parts so quickly! I don't think all of them have been addressed, though - I've struck through the ones that no longer apply, would you mind taking a look at those that remain?
As regards the suitability of OurCampaigns as a source, can you point to anywhere where it has been deemed to be suitable? The mere fact that it's used in various articles doesn't mean it's an acceptable source, and the only conversation I can find on it at WP:RS/N is far from a consensus that it is okay to use. The primary source should be used whenever possible. While generally accurate, ourcampaigns is still a user-generated secondary source for election results, and we should cite perhaps what they cite - irrespective of whether or not the data is accurate, it still comes under WP:UGC.
All the best! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:02, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Naypta: Earl Landgrebe, Jon Huntsman Jr., Barney Frank, and Newt Gingrich are a few GA articles that use OurCampaigns as a source. - Jon698 talk 12:29 26 May 2020 (UTC)
@Jon698: In the reviewed versions of those articles, OurCampaigns does not appear as a source. But again, even if it did, this GA review is not about other articles, it's about this article, and I'm as of yet unconvinced that any exception to WP:UGC would apply for OurCampaigns. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:39, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Naypta: A guideline is not a rule. There is no consensus banning OurCampaigns and yes the review version of Earl Landgrebe does have OurCampaigns as a source as you can clearly see in the Electoral History section. Also the review versions of Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman Jr. DO use OurCampaigns as a source if you just use the find tool and type in "campaigns" and go to the references section. - Jon698 talk 12:51 26 May 2020 (UTC)
@Jon698: Guidelines have exceptions, yes, but I don't see how this is one of them. OurCampaigns to me is not a reliable source, irrespective of anything else, because it is user generated, and so the same reasoning we don't cite Wikipedia on Wikipedia applies. I can now see that some of those articles did indeed have OurCampaigns-sourced content in the review - sorry, I missed them when I was looking over as it wasn't specifically marked as coming from that source - but again, what is or isn't somewhere else is immaterial to the situation we have here.
If you disagree with me on this, I'm happy to request a second opinion, but as I've said earlier, I'm at the moment unwilling to pass 2b with OurCampaigns as a source. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 12:59, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Naypta: On 2c:"Update: the part here talking about a special election is still unsourced - the source says he might be appointed, not that he might be elected" Source 40 clearly states that he would not wish to be a "caretaker" of the Senate seat. A caretaker is somebody who only serves as an appointee and doesn't run in the special election. He is stating that he did not want to be a caretaker and that if he was appointed he would run in the special election. - Jon698 talk 13:01 26 May 2020 (UTC)
@Jon698: The clipping that's referenced says he doesn't want to be a caretaker, yes, but it doesn't actually say he's going to run in the special election - his words are "I cross every bridge generally when I get to it", which is actively evasive on the topic. I don't think that's a clear source for that claim. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 13:09, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Naypta: Fixed. Also for 1a I have moved the "in the Caribbean" part to the end of the sentence. - Jon698 talk 13:16 26 May 2020 (UTC)
Thank you, I've updated the table above to match. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 13:30, 26 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @Naypta: I might not be able to edit Wikipedia for a few days so I decided just to avoid a conversation and look for the election results myself through Newspapers.com and found them. So now that that is done can you finish up the review? Thanks in advance. - Jon698 talk 18:16 31 May 2020 (UTC)
@Jon698: Hey, thanks for that - looks good! The only thing left I think at this point is the point about the original research re the name of Sebelius' wife, year of marriage, and children. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 21:59, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've just realised that point was invisible apart from in the wikitext... It's visible again now - the URL referenced had an equals in, which was messing up the wikitext, and I didn't think to check the preview. Genuinely sorry about that, I was under the impression it was visible previously. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 22:07, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Naypta: Fixed. Hopefully everything is in order now :) - Jon698 talk 22:12 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@Jon698: Thanks for moving the citation down there, but that's not addressed the issue - that's the citation I was looking at when I wrote that part of the review. The cited page says Sebelius' wife was named Bette, with no mention of a middle name either, and makes no mention of the initials of either of their sons. Clearly there's a Wikipedia article on one of them, so that's sourced there as his name I'm sure, but for the other one and the wife's name, there's no clear path to verifiability on those at the moment. Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 22:21, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Naypta: LMAO dumb mistake by me. I accidentally moved the wrong references. My last edit added in the references about his wife's full name and his children. - Jon698 talk 22:27 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@Jon698: Nice job! I'm passing the article Just a note, as well - {{re}} takes just the username, without the "User:" prefix - otherwise it won't do pings properly.
Well done, the article looks great! Naypta ☺ | ✉ talk page | 09:34, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]