Talk:Ted Stevens/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Jerome Frank Disciple (talk · contribs) 15:25, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Closing summary. @AlaskaGal: I'm sorry to report that I'm, unfortunately, quick failing this good-article nominee. To be clear: I think you're really close.

When I started on this article, I first took a look at the post-trial section, and I noticed a few sentences that didn't line up with the sources offered. That was a red flag. As I investigated other sections, I mostly saw that the sources cited did support what was said, but another problem emerged: a few sources said exactly what was in the article, and it wasn't just a single isolated incident. The plagiarism concerns I raised below (and which I've found are present in other parts of the article) really need to be addressed before a GA nom.

I know it's a fair amount of work, but you can absolutely get this article to GA status. I would suggest:

Pinpoint every paragraph that relies on a single source, or every long passage of text that only cites a single source at the end. Then, check those sources and make sure that there are no plagiarism issues.
Address the fact tags that I added.
Focus on replacing dead-link sources (or removing the content that those dead links are used to support).
Re-check every image. Make sure that you know that each image that says it's in the public domain is in the public domain. No "probably" or "likely".
Expand some of the positions/sections that you've added during this review.

If you do those things, I think you'll have it in the bag. I'd even be happy to re-review! Good luck, --Jerome Frank Disciple 13:20, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for how in-depth this review was, I have a much better idea now of what to do. I'll re-check the images & the proofs I had provided and make sure that they are, for sure, in the public domain. I will also work on rewording some of the sentences which are plagiarised and working on getting more sources. It may be hard for some parts, especially Stevens' dispute with Mike Gravel because of how little they are covered, most sources actually referencing Wikipedia itself, but once I get to working on it, it should be top notch. I aim to greatly expand his time in Interior and his work on civil rights, and also do my own fact checking on some of the more dubious claims. One thing I thing also should be considered is this article's only just started receiving attention since I've been advertising Stevens and trying to rehabilitate his legacy. I think NPOV is not followed too much, since back when a lot of this was written, his page was often a source for vandalism, and the general Internet attitude to him was very negative, many things we understood back then would later be disproven or taken from another angle as more of his papers enter the public eye, both positive & negative. Thank you so much. <3

As for a question, once I think I've finished up, should I just renominate or wait a little? ~ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 13:35, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I'm really glad that you're not discouraged—if it weren't for the plagiarism concerns, I was really prepared to hold this GA for as along as it took to help you get there. But I think there's enough work here that a full re-review on your end would actually be much faster.

One thing I do want to address: "It may be hard for some parts, especially Stevens' dispute with Mike Gravel because of how little they are covered".

If you can't easily find many sources covering an event or certain dynamic (like Stevens/Gravel), don't feel like you have to research it into the ground! I don't want you to take away from my close that I want you to do that—if you did, I would have terribly wasted your time. As to any information you're considering covering in the article, the key thing I'd suggest asking is "How much does this information contribute to a reader's overall understanding of Stevens?" And, when it comes to a high-profile subject (which Stevens is, of course), one way to better answer that question is to ask "How much attention do other sources covering the subject give this aspect?" In other words, the amount of attention you give a specific aspect of Stevens should generally be proportionate to that aspects prominence in other reliable sources.

Is the Gravel-Stevens dynamic a little telling? Sure! And I'm not saying remove it—even one source is enough. But do you need more than a couple sentences about it? Well, how much does a reader really learn about Stevens by reading about his relationship with Gravel? (Conversely, I think Stevens's policy positions do, generally, contribute to a readers' overall understanding of Stevens, and they're well covered by other sources.)--Jerome Frank Disciple 13:59, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Alright. Thank you so much again. I think understanding a person's psychology & relationships is key to understanding their policies and why they backed them. I will try to update and lengthen his policies section, since before I began working on this article, they didn't mention many if any of the major laws he authored, sponsored or co-sponsored. I didn't even know he authored the order creating the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge until recently. Most sources give very brief descriptions, more in depth sources tend to focus on his pork barrel spending. However, quite a lot of the works about him are criticisms from organizations like GreenPeace & Citizens against Government Waste, or opinion articles decrying him as the 'head of Big Oil'. It's not that hard to find articles about him, but very hard to find neutral articles about him. Stevens & Gravel, and their relationship, is, I believe, key to understanding Alaskan policy in the 1970s. ~ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 10:14, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Criteria

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

Introduction

Hello! I am planning to review this article. (Apologies for the delay—I meant to start this page last night.) Given the length it might take me a little bit, and I'll be working in fits and starts, it'll take me some time before I post a full review, but I'll periodically add things here and there as I go. I'll also make a fair effort to fix the things I can fix. Within two or three days, I should have my first round of feedback entirely posted.

Just a note: my first concern is the sourcing, which I see was also an issue in the last review. There are still quite a few paragraphs with only one citation, at the end, and my examination of one of those paragraphs last night led to the discovery that there was actually a fair bit of material that wasn't supported by the provided source. I see you've addressed that already, great job, but I'm concerned the issue will show up again. Also, I've tagged a few article references as dead links. I'm running IABot now to see if any can be rescued, but, once that's done, I'd strongly suggest checking for replacement sources or, assuming none can be found, deleting the content that depended on the links. The dead-link tag is a little hard to see—it's in superscript in the references section—I suggest using your browser's find function (control+F or command+F, depending on whether you're using a PC or Mac) and searching "dead link" (no quotation marks). --Jerome Frank Disciple 15:25, 10 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It is reasonably well written.
a. (prose, spelling, and grammar):

Mostly good. Just a few small grammatical states. Almost everything is clear. A slight issue with over quoting in certain sections, but not terrible.

b. (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

The lead could probably be refocused a bit. It's slightly on the long side, and right now it seems to be like a bit over-detailed chronological summary of his life. I addressed this a bit, but I think a bit more trimming could be done.

Try to make sure all the citations are cited in the same citation style—in particular, there shouldn't be bare URLs. I've already done a bit of work on that front, and I think the process of manually checking the citations will also alert you to any other dead links (if they remain).

There are a few sources that are presented in ALLCAPS. Those should be rendered lowercase. (That said, I noticed they were primary sources ... I can't imagine that secondary sources don't exist covering the same thing. Why not replace them?)
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a. (reference section):

b. (citations to reliable sources):
Do we have a digital copy of the Whitney article? Obviously it's not necessary, but it's cited a lot, and it'd be nice to be able to check that article.

c. (OR):

d. (copyvio and plagiarism):

There are a few too many plagiarism issues here, especially with the sources that are very heavily relied on. Make sure you're rephrasing, not just adding words, to excerpts. For example:
Jackson had always held a meeting at the start of a new Congress to let the members of the Committee have their say about what they thought the Committee's priorities should be. is too similar to: Scoop always held that meeting at the start of a new Congress to let the members have their say about what they thought the priorities were.

Or (and this one's really egregious):

He began to drop hints, in both Washington and Alaska, that he felt the only reason he was in that plane in the first place was that he had to piece the effort for a land bill back together, and that the only reason he had to do that was that Mike Gravel killed the bill. Most of his remarks in this vein were tactfully not printed by reporters, who saw them as the musings of a "man half-crazy with grief". (article), with: He began to drop hints, in Washington and Alaska, that he felt the only reason he was in that plane in the first place was that he had to piece the effort for a land bill back together, and that the only reason he had to do that was that Mike Gravel killed the bill. Most of his remarks in this vein were tactfully not printed by reporters, who saw them as the musings of a man half-crazy with grief. (source)

I would double check all the paragraphs with one citation at the end to see if the paragraphs are plagiarizing.

Broadly, this isn't fatal or anything, but I'm concerned that the article over-relies on Whitney (and, to a lesser degree, Mitchell). It cites three of Whitney's articles 55 times.
It is broad in its coverage.
a. (major aspects):

For the most part yes, though this might be a borderline case. I think the article emphasizes the chronological narrative of Stevens's life a bit too heavily—the political-positions section could certainly be shored up quite a bit. Within that section, it seems slightly random which topics get more coverage and which get less. I also wonder about the organization. Why is the subsection on Stevens's civil-rights positions merged with the U.S. Supreme Court?
Surely, particularly given his tenure, there's more to say about his civil-rights positions, no? Just one Google search, and I found a Washington Post article calling him "the father of Title IX" (!!!) [1]. But Title IX isn't mentioned in this article? I'd review this.
I also think it's possible the article downplays Stevens's strong association with pork-barrel funding. It's mentioned in two locations, but perhaps it deserves its own section? I mean, that association was, to say the least, well covered. (CBS News (calling him "The King of Pork") NBC News (calling him one of the kings of pork), New York Times, etc.)

b. (focused):

Arguably some unnecessary detail on the chronological timeline / discussion of personal disputes (especially given the light touch on policy opinions), but nothing egregious.
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.
a. (images are tagged and non-free content have non-free use rationales):
Images aren't my specialty, but, after being prompted by the editors below, I do have a few concerns.

File:Ted Stevens Graduation photo (cropped 3x4).png—claim is that the photo was published without a copyright notice, but the photo apparently came from a yearbook, and, so far as I can tell, no one has access to the original yearbook. So how do we know about copyright?

File:Ted Stevens Military.jpg—finds "obvious theft & false claim of copyright ownership by Getty" because the piece is "work of the U.S. Military". But how do we know that the military took that photo?

File:Ted & Ann Stevens' wedding.PNG—"published in the United States between 1928 and 1977, inclusive, without a copyright notice." I'm a little confused here—the source is a website, and there's no comment about it being originally published somewhere else.

File:Interior Dept. Secretary Seaton & Solicitor Stevens.jpg—Getty image that "has no copyright notice nor evidence of renewal or ownership." ... Is that the right standard?

b. (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Great job on the amount of images. If anything, I'd say the article is almost over illustrated, but not to the extent that presents a GA concern.
Overall:
Pass/fail:

(Criteria marked are unassessed)

Comments

Before you pass the part on images with flying colors, bear in mind that the nominator's record at Commons is less than stellar. Randomly scraping images off the web and arbitrarily declaring them to be compliant is one thing. Misrepresenting sources is another. The lack of warm bodies at Commons is a contributing factor to this being allowed to happen. I seem to recall a recent GA nomination where a third-party review was made. Can we get that here? RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 05:28, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I admit images are not my specialty. I did a spot check of the images, and virtually every file was listed as being in the public domain. I didn't realize one user was behind many of the photos. Looking more closely, I do have a few concerns, which I'll note above.--Jerome Frank Disciple 16:54, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To answer most of the concerns, I emailed Getty about the Bettmann archive (Talk:Mike Mansfield), and they gave the answer that my own research should be done since they don't hold the copyright, Bettmann themselves usually don't either. Most of the work of the Ted Stevens Foundation is actually found on Stevens' old Senate pages, and are usually from the Ted Stevens papers, so they're usually personal photos & film from the Stevens family which lapsed into the public domain. As for Ted Stevens Military, I don't have any idea how I came to that conclusion, and I'm nominating it for deletion. I know illness isn't an excuse for anything, but I was suffering from folate anaemia around May 2022 (which we only found around October/November), and I had seemingly been suffering for a while and it caused some cognitive impairment, which is the only reason I can think of, many of my old files seem to make no sense to me and I've since nominated them for deletion, though I'm a bit worried about my credibility for the future cases since I've done much more in depth research and have had other editors review them and check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Some have even survived deletion nominations. File:Ted Stevens Military.jpg should be aptly deleted, though, I have 0 idea how I came to that conclusion. Thank you for flagging this, I would've likely missed it otherwise. ~ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 12:24, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There is a chance this is a personal photo of Stevens's from that time, and it may qualify under PD-US-no-renewal, but I don't think it does. There are PD images of Stevens in the military out there. AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 12:26, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

While I enjoyed reading this article and feel that description and detail-wise it is good, there are certain instances of copying from the Great Alaska Feud in certain instances. Rewriting to be more original would be prudent. Just my comment. SuperWIKI (talk) 08:11, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, as I've noted there are a few plagiarism concerns—including some paragraphs lifted almost verbatim. In fact—the giant second paragraph I had listed above is from the Washington Post article you linked! I appreciate the input regardless :) --Jerome Frank Disciple 15:53, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Main issue with this kind of copying from prose-style news articles in general is that, aside from the copying itself, the language comes out as too poetic. For an encyclopaedia article, that's frankly inappropriate, though I'm sure that the editor's intentions were good. I hope this can be fixed before the nom is finalised - after realising that some areas of this article were copied, I didn't feel ummmm, to use the word, "enthusiastic" about rereading it. An excellently-made Wikipedia bio article usually has me reading over and over again. SuperWIKI (talk) 18:15, 11 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think at some point I was getting around to correcting the language and making it seem less like an action film and more encyclopedic. However, I'm unsure why, but I seemed to have stopped at some point and forgotten about it. Odd. ~ AlaskaGal~ ^_^ 12:44, 12 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]