Talk:Ángela Acuña Braun/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs) 18:20, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Looks well written, detailed comments over the next few days. Vanamonde (talk) 18:20, 4 October 2018 (UTC)

Checklist

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   All issues have been addressed.

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

   All issues have been addressed.

2. Is it verifiable with no original research?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   All issues have been addressed.

   B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:

   All comments have been addressed

   C. It contains no original research:

   The sources I spot-checked were used appropriately: AGF on Spanish sources.

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

   Earwig's tool is clear, spotchecks found nothing of concern.

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   No substantive aspects seem to have been left out

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

   No extraneous material

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

   No issues here.

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

   Article is stable.

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

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

   Image licenses check out to the best of my abilities.

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

   Minor issues with captions have been fixed

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   All issues addressed, passing shortly.

Comments

My apologies for taking so long to get to this. I'll try and be quick.

• Can we find a link for "Europe's suffrage movement"?

•  Done SusunW (talk) 17:21, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• I'm not a fan of "becoming exposed to", which to me has medical connotations: can we find a different phrase? (This isn't a big deal, it's just to make the words flow better).

•  Done SusunW (talk) 17:21, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• I think a redlink for the Lycaeum would be helpful.

•  Done SusunW (talk) 17:28, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• The image caption could have a little more detail, I think: In general, it's my opinion (not backed by policy) that captions shouldn't require someone to refer back to the text. I'd go with something like "The [lycaeum]", where Acuna studied between [years], pictured in 2010".

•  Done SusunW (talk) 17:28, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• I'm a little hesitant about the free-use claim, though it's probably okay. Is there any way to verify when the pictured building was constructed? Costa Rica does not have freedom of panorama.

• The school was established in 1887 on Calle de la Universidad, which is now Second Avenue and the location of the Social Security Administration. It moved to a facility, which had been formerly a jail, in 1902, on Calle 9 near the Plaza Cleto Gonzáles Víquez.[1] Apparently the Casas de Corrección was built by Italian brothers, Francesco y Lorenzo Durini Vasalli in 1897.[2] and after sustaining damage in a 1910 earthquake was restored. It was made a cultural heritage site in 1981.[3]

• With the third image, too, more detail in the caption may be helpful (if you feel it's too long, the other names could be moved to a note, but it's not necessary); especially since the tour itself doesn't seem to be mentioned elsewhere?

•  Done The tour is mentioned in the text, but I added "People's Mandate to End War" for clarity.

• The sentence about Maud Wood Park strikes me as out of place, because it isn't at the moment directly connected to anything about Acuna...

• Added information about the first organization to establish Pan American ties and links to CIM. SusunW (talk) 18:53, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• Is there more information about the 1919 strike? You mention it in the context of the 1923 meeting, but not before...

• She wasn't a teacher and wasn't involved in the strike, as far as I can tell, but it was a motivating factor for her, as she empathized with their issues. I have never found enough information for an article on the strike itself, but see Ana Rosa Chacón. SusunW (talk) 19:00, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• There's occasional inconsistencies with whether the Oxford comma is used. I prefer it used, but really what it needs is consistency, and either choice is okay.

• Okay, I tried to get them all. The issue is of course, various editors use different styles. SusunW (talk) 19:21, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• I'm a bit confused by the structure of the sentence about male teacher's salaries: it makes it sound like there was a long-standing proposal that Acuna challenged in 1924. Does the comma need to be moved, or am I misunderstanding something?

•  Done SusunW (talk) 19:21, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• "She was also involved in the issue of paternity investigation." To be honest, this is very vague. Is there more information available?

• Extremely common issue at the time for women's rights advocates. Women were not citizens in their own right, they had little authority over their own children. Men could choose not to recognize illegitimate children. Throughout the Americas there were discussions at international conferences from the 1930s to enact child welfare and protection laws for children. I've added a source and explanation. SusunW (talk) 19:53, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• So after several reviews which have touched on this topic, I've come to the opinion that unnecessary acronyms should be omitted if possible. LFC is one such; it is used as an acronym twice. You could use the full form and make it easier to follow without increasing length much.

•  Done SusunW (talk) 20:01, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• The switch to aviculture is a bit bizarre; is there any further information about that?

• No idea, I found another source discussing her research on poultry in archive.org, but it is inaccessible to me here in Mexico. SusunW (talk) 20:01, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• "following his divorce" This divorce has not been mentioned before, so I'd phrase this as "Chacon could not have a church marriage as a result of a previous divorce" or something.

•  Done SusunW (talk) 20:01, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• "social ostracism often occurred" This is rather odd passive phrasing. "...were socially ostracized" is how I would put it.

•  Done SusunW (talk) 20:01, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• "part of the People's Mandate to End War" A half-sentence explaining what this is would be helpful, I think, since the title actually tells you very little.

•  Done SusunW (talk) 20:13, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• CIM is another acronym that could be disposed of.

•  Done SusunW (talk) 20:13, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• The title "Dr." should not be used, per MOS:DOCTOR.

•  Done SusunW (talk) 20:13, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• Cities in the US should be linked, I think.

•  Done

• "Her area of study depicted her concerns for the fight for Human Rights as well as the protection of women and children. She recognized that these were problems needing international attention and solutions" To be quite honest, I would omit this sentence, unless you want to attribute it to CEDUCAR and place it in the legacy section. Its more analysis than description.

• I think it is important, as it underscores why she studied in the US. I deleted the sentence and added a modification here: In 1941 and 1942, she took courses at Columbia University to study juvenile justice systems, as she recognized that protection for women and children required integrated international solutions.

• "She was involved in various types of case" This is ungrammatical, but it's also a bit vague; how did her position relate to these things? Was she investigating, mediating, what?

• Fixed the grammatical issue, but as the sentence before stated investigated, seems redundant to repeat that. Used examined. SusunW (talk) 20:44, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• I wonder if the last paragraph of "career" could be moved to death and legacy, as it is about her personal life and the recognition she received.

•  Done SusunW (talk) 20:44, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

That's it from me on the prose in the body. I'll return to the lead and the rest of the checks after you've had a chance to get to these. On the whole this is well written and broadly covers the topic, so I see no reason why this shouldn't pass after a little more work. Vanamonde (talk) 17:03, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

As always Vanamonde93 I appreciate your review. Your thoroughness always finds some thing that needs clarification and improves the article. Please advise if there are further issues. SusunW (talk) 20:44, 26 October 2018 (UTC)

• Apologies again for the delay. A couple more points, lede and non-prose related: "Acuña immediately presented a reform to the civil code, which was adopted." This reads as though the reform was related to women in law, which it wasn't; it was related to her electoral work. I'd suggest breaking that up differently; end the first paragraph on "barred from the profession", and include the reform (perhaps with a few more explanatory words) with the second paragraph.

• I am confused. She graduated with her Bachelor of Laws in 1916 and while she could earn a degree, she was barred from practicing law. She submitted a proposal that passed on 7 June 1916, shortly after she graduated, to allow women to serve as lawyers, "procuradores" and witnesses. She didn't submit a proposal for women to gain the right to vote (though she did pressure legislators to do it) until 1929. SusunW (talk) 08:32, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

• My apologies, I misread this.

• Women's rights should be linked

•  Done SusunW (talk) 07:12, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

• Her award needs a link or a translation in the lead, I think: otherwise, people who do not speak spanish will be lost.

• There isn't an exact translation, worthy of the homeland, meritorious service to the homeland, etc. I added an English phrase. SusunW (talk) 07:12, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

• I received a certain amount of flak a few months ago for using the {{via}} parameter to link to paid databases because I was under the erroneous impression that the Wikipedia library required it. Unless you're particularly keen on them, I'd suggest omitting them.

• That doesn't make sense to me. It's where I obtained access to them. The instructions I received from the WP library when I got passwords was to cite the library partner. That makes sense to me if the partner wants to monitor how often they are used, it's easy enough to ascertain if it is cited, but impossible if it is not. SusunW (talk) 07:18, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

@SusunW: Well the discussion [4] was not unequivocally against, so I'm not going to make an issue of it, but it's something to be aware of if you're using TWL resources. Vanamonde (talk) 19:44, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Honestly, it seems we are going overboard on the issue of promotionalism. It is possible to acknowledge something without giving it favor *sigh*. SusunW (talk) 19:49, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

• Most of the sources seem perfectly acceptable. You've used a few primary sources, which in and of themselves are not a problem; but the use of primary sources should be restricted to statements of fact, rather than statements which require some analysis. If I'm not mistaken, sources 2, 5, 11, and 32 are primary sources (are there others? I'm limited by my Spanish). Can we find a different source for "as she recognized that protection for women and children required integrated international solutions", which so far as I can tell is the only analytical statement for which a primary source is used?

• I have nothing in the article that is a primary source. 2) Is a secondary source from an organization with which she had a distant relationship, as the International League of Iberian and Latin American Women was an umbrella organization located in Spain, with which her Liga Feminista Costarricense was associated; 5) is a secondary source from the Ministry of Education with whom she was employed; 11) is a secondary source by the Legislature of Costa Rica regarding the meritorious award she received from them; and 32) is a secondary source prepared by the bar association of Costa Rica, who granted her license to practice.

The statement from 5) the Ministry of Education states: "Sus preocupaciones giraron en torno a dos grandes ejes: la defensa de las mujeres y la niñez y la lucha por los Derechos Humanos. En el campo del derecho, estas inquietudes cristalizaron en amplios estudios comparativos de las constituciones del continente y de los diferentes códigos civiles, para comprender el trato legal que se daba a las mujeres americanas." (Literally translated: Her concerns revolved around two major axes: the defense of women and children and the struggle for human rights. In the field of law, these concerns crystallized in extensive studies of the constitutions from the continent and the different civil codes, in order to understand the legal treatment of women in the Americas).

While it is a secondary source that is not independent from her, it is not discussing her career in education, but rather her career in law in this statement. Since the Ministry of Education had nothing to do with her legal practices, it seems to me that it is not problematic, but I have added a second citation to Cleary (#25) which says "She was concerned with the clarification of laws dealing with the rights of Costa Rican women" and that she worked with US and Central American countries. Much more vague, but the point is that she did work throughout the region to understand the depth of the international problems women experienced.

Well the question really is "where did their information come from". Are these sources simply presenting what the author knows? Or are they using other sources of information? The way they are presented makes me think it's the former, and that they are therefore primary sources. But I may be wrong. Vanamonde (talk) 19:44, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

The newspaper article source is unknown, it may well have been her, but the Ministry's piece indicates its references, specifically a biography, Acuña, forjadora de estrellas, written by Yadira Calvo Fajardo and the National Institute of Women, among others. Her own publishing also confirms that she made comparative law studies for the Pan American Union. SusunW (talk) 19:59, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

I think the problem here is that the great majority of people do not understand how international the press for expanding women's rights was. It wasn't viewed as a local issue, but a global one, in part because women lost their citizenship upon marriage. If a woman was Costa Rican and married a Brit, she suddenly was a British subject, but with none of the rights of citizenship. If she divorced, she became stateless. There was wide recognition that suffrage would only grant political agency and would not address civil or economic parity. From the 1920s, international women gathered documentation on the laws of every country to demonstrate the inequalities in how law treated men and women. They presented their findings to the League of Nations in a massive tome, which contained the legal texts and their translations. Their work eventually led to the UN's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the Convention on the Nationality of Married Women in 1957. It is clear from Acuña's involvement with the League of Iberian and Latin American Women, Pan American Union, Inter-American Commission on Women, Inter-American Commission of Women and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, that she was one of these Internationalist feminists. It seems logical to me that the statement about her focus is generally widely known. SusunW (talk) 15:26, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

In this interests of passing this quickly I've gone and made one change myself, from "recognized" to "believed". I'm not 100% satisfied with it even so, but I think at the GA level it's fine. The issue is as follows: government sources are highly variable. Sometimes they're excellent biographies; sometimes they are puff pieces intended to promote someone affiliated with the ruling dispensation (this isn't Costa Rica specific, I mean this generally). Thus they need to be used with extreme caution. By using "believed", we're making that a statement about Acuna, rather a statement about Acuna and a philosophical statement about juvenile issues. Does that make sense? If you're unhappy, I'd be happy to discuss this further on the article talk page. I'm going to pass this now, as it meets the criteria comfortably. Vanamonde (talk) 17:23, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Works for me Vanamonde93 and I do understand your caution. Would that I had access to that biography, but it has apparently not been digitized and all of my attempts to secure it came to nought. However, her career easily confirms that she believed in international cooperation and solutions, so I think your compromise is fair. Again, I thank you for the time you put in to improve the article and appreciate your efforts. SusunW (talk) 18:23, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

• A minor point; the "career" section is very long. Is there any way to break it up into subsections; it could be just two, but more would be okay? For instance, the last few paragraphs seem to focus on her international work; that could be a subsection title. This is optional, though, as it's not a GA requirement.

•  Done SusunW (talk) 08:38, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

• @SusunW: I'm essentially done now: a last couple of points and this should be a worthy addition to the list of GAs. Vanamonde (talk) 01:50, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Vanamonde93 No worries, I've been busy working on a couple of others ;) Again, thanks for taking the time to review it. I truly appreciate your work on it and realize how busy your schedule has been. Let me know if you need me to do anything else.