Talk:A Little Lower than the Angels

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by Yoninah (talk) 11:50, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
Neutrality issues unresolved

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• Article history

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• ... that Latter-Day Saint Apostle John A. Widtsoe gave A Little Lower than the Angels a negative review for Virginia Sorensen's portrayal of Joseph Smith as an "ordinary, insipid milk and water figure"? Source: Howe, Susan Elizabeth (2002). "Virginia Sorensen's A Little Lower Than the Angels and John A. Widtsoe; A Lesson in Literary History". Annual (Association for Mormon letters): 87–94.
  • ALT1:... that Virginia Sorensen's main characters in A Little Lower than the Angels were based on her own grandparents, who brought books across the plains as pioneers? Source: Sorensen, Virgina (1980). "'If You Are a Writer, You Write!': an interview with Virginia Sorensen". Dialogue. 13: 17–36.

Created by Bassknight(byu) (talk). Self-nominated at 21:39, 6 November 2020 (UTC).

• New enough, long enough, neutrally written, well referenced. As most sources are offline, unable to check for close paraphrasing. No QPQ needed for nominator with less than 5 DYK credits.
• Please look at how I edited the article to bring it in line with other Wikipedia book articles.
• Neither hook is accurate. ALT0 is rather wordy and includes a quote that doesn't appear in the article. ALT1 is so-so in terms of interest but the article says it was her great-grandparents, not her grandparents. If you have any corrections or new hook ideas, please add them to the bottom of this thread. Thanks, Yoninah (talk) 00:06, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• Article tagged for paid contributions —valereee (talk) 13:12, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• @Valereee: this is no different than other editors who have (byu) in their usernames. They use the LDS library to write about LDS subjects, but try to be factual and impartial. This is a new editor who is still learning Wikipedia style. Yoninah (talk) 19:32, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Yoninah, his user page says he's paid by the library to create articles about them. —valereee (talk) 19:37, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: This is the same statement given by User:Rachel Helps (BYU), our first and longtime BYU editor, and User:Cstickel(byu). Yoninah (talk) 19:51, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Yoninah, do we have consensus on whether this is a major COI or not? I've seen Rachel Helps around before, but the statement that "I am an employee at the Harold B. Lee library at Brigham Young University (BYU), hired to write and edit Wikipedia articles related to the University and its history" is pretty plain. Have we had an RfC on this at COIN? —valereee (talk) 20:00, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

valereee I am not aware of any consensus. I've been reviewing these articles for years and they all seem straightforward and impartial. Yoninah (talk) 20:07, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Yoninah, I'm really uncomfortable with it. If we haven't had one, maybe we need an RfC. I believe the Mormons are a well-intentioned lot. I don't believe they'd intentionally violate our rules. That doesn't mean they don't have a COI that needs to be examined. —valereee (talk) 20:13, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: OK, go ahead and open an RfC. These are the 3 editors that I'm aware of. Yoninah (talk) 20:54, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Yoninah: Thank you for your help with this article! This is my first original article, and definitely was showing it. How flexible can these hooks be grammar-wise? I know that they need to be quotes from the article itself, but most of the sentences in the article don't make sense on their own without the context/antecedents. Should I edit the article to repeat book and person names more frequently? My next best idea for a hook would be from the "Publication" section: "The success of the novel outside of Utah was credited in some part to the open way Sorensen portrayed this early Mormon culture in a human, unthreatening way." I'll work with Rachel to get you something better. Thank you again! Bassknight(byu) (talk) 19:57, 30 November 2020‎ (UTC)

• The nominator hasn't edited since their above message on November 30th. Since this is an LDS-related topic, I'm pinging Rachel Helps (BYU) asking them for their assistance and to see if they're willing to adopt this. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 04:20, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Naruto, the article isn't neutral, or rather the lead isn't. This isn't an "impartial" account of plural marriage but a highly critical one. See, for example, Moos (2005), p. 132. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:30, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

If that's the case, then if no one else is willing to adopt this then unfortunately the nomination will have to be closed as abandoned. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 23:08, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

It hasn't been abandoned. But if the neutrality and COI issues aren't resolved, it may have to be closed as unsuccessful. Yoninah (talk) 23:14, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Regardless, given that the nominator isn't editing at the moment, another editor will need to address the concerns for this to pass. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 09:12, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

• The nominator hasn't edited in a month and significant article issues remain. In addition, no editor has adopted this in the meantime. As such, it is now marked for closure. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 06:56, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

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• Specific text to be added or removed: remove cleanup banner warning that the page may not be neutral because of page contributions
• Reason for the change: I believe the page to be neutral, but I also believe that someone else should evaluate that. Full disclosure: I work for the BYU Library and I have two BYU students who work under me. We've been contributing to Wikipedia for many years. We are paid to edit pages related to our collections, and we strive to adhere to Wikipedia's policies, especially NPOV. Our main goal is to improve the quality of pages by summarizing and citing many of the reliable sources we have in our library. Back in 2020, I tried to hire a student to work over the pandemic, but I wasn't able to train her as thoroughly as normally. She described Sorensen's treatment of polygamy as "impartial", which SaraSV objected to (see above DYK review). Around that time, SaraSV was highly criticizing my contributions, to the point that she said that I should stop editing, and I decided to let the matter of the DYK drop. Recently, a more experienced student of mine has been adding more research to the page, which I believe is more complex than simply portraying polygamy positively or negatively. From RGreen's edits: "Rather than creating an argument on the truth of Mormonism, Sorensen rather focuses on the effects that the religion has on its people." I also removed the word "impartial" from the lead to simply mention that the novel addresses polygamy.
• References supporting change: latest diffs?

Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:39, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

 Done Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 06:21, 2 July 2023 (UTC)