Talk:1838 Mormon War/GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: Gottagitgud (talk · contribs) 13:53, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Penultimate supper (talk · contribs) 16:16, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I'd be happy to review this! It seems like a nice article on my first pass. While I'm not a member myself, I have an ongoing interest in Mormon history which springs from having lived in communities with many LDS members for many years, so I'm always interested in diving a bit deeper and supporting good content on the topic for the encyclopedia. I will try and get some initial comments by the end of the day, and complete a source review and provide more detailed comments over the weekend. — penultimate_supper 🚀 ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:16, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Gottagitgud, I'm still compiling the detailed review of all the GA criteria, but I have completed some initial notes and a review of +10% of the sources, and have added those notes below. I'll provide further comments as I go. As of right now, I have mostly good impressions of the article, and I think it's either close to or already fulfills most of the criteria, but I think the citations will need a bit of work; I'll provide more specific thoughts in the detailed review sections. Thanks for the work you've put in thoughtfully improving an article that so many people had already contributed to over the years, its nice to see that type of collaboration and quality improvement work still taking place on articles that have a long history, honoring the editors who've contributed before us. — penultimate_supper 🚀 ^{(talk • contribs)}

Overview

• The article has been around since 2004, and has seen contributions from 160 editors over twenty years.
• The nominator has contributed 15% to the article, contributing over the past year.
• The article has 5800 words of readable prose, with a total size of 348 kb which seems appropriate for the topic considering the number and depth of reliable sources available.
• The lede is well-written and informative, but there may be some room for improvement in terms of length (it's about 10% of the article), detail (it provides a pretty detailed timeline of events that may not be all needed in the lede) and establishing a bit more about the context of the war and why it is notable in terms of larger issues in either Mormon or Missouri history. I'll provide a few more detailed recommendations in another section.
• Claims are thoroughly cited throughout the article, but I do have some concerns about WP:RS issues and over-reliance on primary sources or sources that are too close to events chronologicaly where stronger, more recent, scholarly sources may exist.
• I haven't done a detailed image review yet, but the article is well illustrated on first glance.
• No glaring prose issues on a first read through, it is readable and clearly written throughout. Will provide specific reccs about prose in another section.

GA Criteria

in process

Citation spot-check

I reviewed 10% of the citations, selected randomly from [1]. Because so many of them ended up being from LeSueur 1990, I added an additional five random citations to ensure my check reflected the diversity of sources included in the article. Somehow, none of the 18 citations I randomly chose came from Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling, the one source I actually own a copy of 🤷🏻‍♂️. Please take some time to review them and either take action or share some thoughts about why the article may be stronger left as is. For citations where I found an issue, it'd probably be good to check whether the same issue applies to other uses of the same source.

• • 3a - Hartley 2001, p. 6 - Verified
    • The convenience link provided for this reference is behind some sort of odd gatekeeping captcha alternative, and I couldn't access it, but I was able to find it here.
  • 24 - Quinn 1994, p. 94 - Verified
  • 25 - Baugh 2000, pp. 36–40 - Issue
    • I'm having trouble finding the 2000 version of this source, it doesn't seem to be available online or via any of the public or academic libraries in my state. The 1996 dissertation version doesn't support the claims in the preceding paragraph on pages 36-40 (although part of the content on those pages is about the same aspect of the events. Additionally, this is both a dissertation and published by BYU Studies, which has a stated aim of publishing "scholarship that is aligned with the purposes of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and the mission of his Church", so I don't know if it's the best source. I'm not saying it's not a reliable source, but since reference 22 and 24 already seem to support all the claims in the paragraph, it's got some marks against it, and it seems to be hard to get ahold of even as a reference professional with broad access, it may be worth removing. Alternately, it seems the author has published more on the topic since, further into their academic career (Baugh, A. L. (2019). “We Have a Company of Danites in These Times”: The Danites, Joseph Smith, and the 1838 Missouri-Mormon Conflict. Journal of Mormon History, 45(3), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.5406/jmormhist.45.3.0001, available here via Wikipedia Library) which may yield some stronger and more helpful cites.
  • 26 - Roberts 1965, Vol. 1, p. 438 - Issue
    • The text on p. 438 seems to be about the “Salt Sermon” addressed in the previous paragraph, while the information about Rigdon’s “Declaration of Independence” is on 440, at least in the 1965 edition I was able to access. This should either be changed, or the citation should be expanded to clarify the use of a different edition, so page number line up. Also, publisher information should be added to the citation, especially as this is a source published by the LDS church.
  • 34 - LeSueur 1990, pp. 77–85 - Verified
  • 40 - LeSueur 1990, pp. 70–71 - Verified
  • 42 - LeSueur 1990, pp. 85–86 - Verified
    • This is verified, but the information comes from a footnote citing another source, which you could make a little more transparent by using an approach like those described on WP:SAYWHERE, which appeals to my academic sensibilities, but is certainly not a GA requirement, nor neccesarily expected with any sort of consistency on WP.
  • 43a - LeSueur 1990, pp. 101–110 - Issue
    • Citing such a wide page range seems like it makes things a bit hard for someone to find verification, and since this same range is reused multiple times to support seperate things, it may be good to break these out into more specific citations. Usage to support the claims in this paragraph is verified, but all the claims in this use come from p. 101. Additionally it seems like this may be a bit too close of a paraphrase—it's a small and direct sentence, but still probably worth reworking:
      • Source: On 20 September about one hundred fifty armed men rode into DeWitt and ordered the Mormons to leave the county within ten days.
      • Article: On September 20, 1838, about one hundred fifty armed men rode into De Witt and demanded that the Mormons leave within ten days.
  • 49 - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1968. - Issue
    • This is a difficult source to track down, linking to a phsyical-only archival collection, which is inherently fine, but the citation also doesn't specify where in this collection this information could be found. It'd be best to either get more specific, so that a reader with access to that collection would be able to find and verify this information, or if that's not doable, to replace this citation with something more accesible that supports the same claims, which seems like it should be possible.
  • 52 - Office of the Secretary of State of Missouri 1841, pp. 43–46, 53–54 - Issue
    • I don't know if citing legal affadavits from the time of the events for a historical event passes WP:RS. Additionally, a span of five pages—including many discrete statements—are being used to support a small set of claims that already appear to have support from a more RS, secondary, source. Could this be removed and the sentences it supports be reworded to rely only on [48] Baugh 2000, pp. 85–87 or possibly the alternate Baugh source I included above?
  • 61 - Andrew Jensen (1889). The Historical Record, Volumes 5-8. p. 732. - Verified
  • 88 - Office of the Secretary of State of Missouri 1841, p. 73 - Issue
    • Same source as 52 above. Can this be removed, and the sentences reworked to rely on [87] LeSueur 1990, pp. 168–172 alone?
  • 89 - Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints 1920, p. 13:450-451. - Issue
    • I had trouble finding a version of this sources I could access. There's a convenience link to an open ebook hosted on Google Play, which I'd reccomend replacing with a link to the Hathi Trust's holdings, but I couldn't get farther than the index in either without my browser crashing due the to size of the files. The citation also seemed to be saying that I'd find this on pp. 450-451 of vol. 13? If that's right, the index of vol. 13 indicates that those pages contain a listing of local historians, rather than explanatory text about the claims made in this article. I don't know enough about the source to be sure if it counts as RS, but I'm a bit concerned about an internal history journal from the Community of Christ not being RS, but I wouldn't fail on those grounds based on my limited info and the direct factual nature of the claims being made. At minimum I think the citation needs to be changed to make it more clear where verification of the claims can be found.
  • 93 - LeSueur 1990, p. 174 - Issue
    • Just a tiny issue, p. 174 isn't explicit about the overnight holding, so I'd expand this to pp. 174-175.
  • 94 - Robinson, Ebenezer, Autobiographical Remarks by Ebenezer Robinson (1832–1843). Reprinted Archived June 11, 2011, at the Wayback Machine by the Book of Abraham Project at boap.org - Small Issue
    • This is verified, and an appropriate source for a quotation, but the first link on the citation is dead, and the citation is worded in a confusing way. Is this an excerpt from a book being mirrored online? If so, I think the citation should be reworked using {{cite book}} and the internet archive link can be retained as a convenience link. I wouldn't be able to find this source using the information currently in the citation if the second link were to die.
  • 98 - LeSueur 1990, p. 182 - Verified
  • 105 - Greene 1839, p. 27 - Issue
    • I don't think this is a reliable source, it's a seemingly self-published pamphlet from the time of the events written on behalf of the Mormons seeking to defend them, written by someone who presents himself as the "authorized messenger of the Mormons" and has no backing in history or journalism. I'd imagine there are more reliable, secondary sources that could verify the claims this source is used for.
  • 107 - Greene 1839, pp. 26–28, 34, 36 - Issue
    • Same issues as in [105] above.