Talk:Martin Luther King Jr./GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: Dana boomer (talk · contribs) 19:27, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi! I'll take this article for GA review, and should have my initial comments up shortly. Dana boomer (talk) 19:27, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks in advance--looking forward to working with you. -- Khazar2 (talk) 19:39, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

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

1. It is reasonably well written.

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

   • For an article of this length, the lead could be expanded (not more paragraphs, just larger ones). For example, nothing of the controversy surrounding his death is mentioned in the lead, and there is only one sentence on his interactions with the FBI, which are given a significant portion of the body of the article.

   • I've expanded the lead to cover each section of the article now, I think.

   • Early life and education, "An academic inquiry concluded portions" When was this inquiry made?

   • Added.

   • Early life and education, "(See Martin Luther King, Jr. authorship issues.)" Is there a more elegant way to integrate this link this than leaving in hanging out at the end of the paragraph in parentheses? Perhaps in a sentence about other authorship issues?

   • The problem was that that article covers alleged plagiarism in his speeches as well as dissertation, so other editors objected to it being linked from the dissertation review. For now I've just moved it down to the "See Also" section.

   • Basic income guarantee - this section seems very short and choppy, no where near as filled out as the other paragraphs. If this was an important part of King's philosophy, it should be expanded. If it wasn't, could it be combined with some other section of the article?

   • I've actually just cut it for now. This article was the first time I ran into this information about King, and it didn't show up in the two biographies I just read. If it turns up in some secondary sources, I'll re-add in an appropriate section, but for now this does stick out to me as odd.

   • SCLC, "King was stabbed in the chest..." Is there more information on this? Why did she stab him? What happened to her? How long did it take him to recover?

   • Expanded on this incident with Highbeam sources.

   • SCLC, "His SCLC secretary and personal assistant in this period was Dora McDonald." Why is this important?

   • It doesn't appear to be. Cut.

   • Albany movement, second paragraph, who is Chief Pritchett?

   • added fuller title and first name.

   • Albany movement, "But for the first time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail." Is there a word missing here?

   • Good question. There are sources with that wording [1][2] but also with "persons" added. I'll add persons for now, as it's also supported by sources and seems more likely to be correct.[3]

   • Allegations of adultery - Is there any knowledge of his wife's reaction to these affairs?

   • Good suggestion. Publicly, she never let on that she cared; I added a quotation to this effect.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

   • Five dead links in references and external links, per this tool, and one dead link tag in the article.

   • The dead links flagged there have been addressed, except for the Tikkun, which appears to me to still be live. I removed the two from external links, removed a minor claim one was supporting (an award from the govt. of Jamaica), and replaced another with a live link.

   • I'm not sure what ref #46 (Extract of Pearson) is being used for. It appears to be a Google Books link to the book listed in #45, but why are they both needed to reference the same sentence?

   • Cut.

   • What makes ref #176 (Jones, Nate) a reliable source? The sentence it is referencing is already supported by another source, so I'm unsure of the need for a blog post.

   • Replaced.

   • Is there a title available for ref #182 (Newsweek: p. 62,)?

   • This ref, and the two after it, don't seem to be needed at all. Replaced with one directly to the book.

   • Could refs #183 and 185 (Abernathy, Ralph David) be combined?

   • One was eliminated.

   • Could refs #175 and 191 (Christensen, Jen) be combined?

   • Done.

   • Ref #216 (NAACP Spingarn Medal) needs a publisher and access date.

   • Added fuller citation.

   • I'm unsure of the purpose of ref #229 (The Episcopal and Lutheran Churches...), as it seems to be mostly duplicated in the article text.

   • Good point. Removed.

   • Several of the books in the References section don't seem to be actually used as references. Should these be moved to the further reading section?

   • Done, I think.

   • The book reference and page formatting is all over the board - I see at least three different styles used. While this isn't something that needs to be rectified for GA, it would be nice to have the article standardized, and it is required if you plan to take the article to FAC.

   • Yeah, I started to clean this up the other day, but was discouraged from continuing by the article's incredibly slow save/load time. I think the problem is having not only 200 reference templates, but for many of them a second template to give the page number and a third to list the work in the bibliography. I think I may try to switch these all over to sfn format to see if it helps the load time issue. I'll set aside a chunk of time later this week when I can try to do it most or all of it at once.

   • Cool. Like I said, this isn't necessary for GA status, but would be really nice. I concur re: the load issue - just trying to make a couple of copyediting tweaks took me a while, because the article took so long to load and save. Dana boomer (talk) 15:52, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

   • I'll work on it on and off today, shouldn't take too long if I put my mind to it. It'd be nice to try to ease the load time issue, and it's a good way to doublecheck all the sources at the same time. -- Khazar2 (talk) 17:00, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Overall this is a very nice piece of work on an extremely influential man. I found a few prose and referencing issues that need to be addressed, but nothing serious. Overall, the article feels a little heavy on quotes, but so many of them are so powerful that I have a hard time seeing how they could be reworded. Perhaps take a look through and see what you think at a macro level? I'm putting the article on hold for now, Dana boomer (talk) 21:22, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

   At first glance, I agree with pretty much all your suggestions--thanks for the close read! While I've read a fair amount about MLK, I'm a relative newcomer to this article, so I haven't looked into all these issues in detail myself. I'll start work on the above in the next day or two. Cheers, -- Khazar2 (talk) 21:27, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

   The article is looking really nice. I think that as soon as the last few issues are finished (the couple of things in the prose section, the lead and the dead links, from what I can see), we should be good to go for GA status. Dana boomer (talk) 15:52, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

   I think that's everything, but let me know if you see anything I missed. Thanks again for the close look. -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:03, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

(outdent) Sorry for taking a couple of days to get back to this. After another look at the article, I think it's ready for promotion to GA status. A couple of further comments, not related to GA status:

• Ref #231 ( "Biographical Outline of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.") is a deadlink. This information looks to be backed up by another source, so I'm not all that worried about it.
• The St. Augustine and Selma sections are quite short and choppy, and don't flow like the rest of the article. Perhaps some thought should be given to expanding these or combining them with other sections?
• The ref work you've been doing looks good, and is lowering the size and load time of the article.
• Do you have plans to take the article to FAC in the future? If so, and you'd like more comments, let me know, and I'll look over the article with an eye aimed towards FAC.

Overall, though, we're good to go for GA. Nice work! Dana boomer (talk) 17:00, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks so much, Dana! That's great news. I know this was a big one to take on, but your suggestions have been a big help. Cheers, -- Khazar2 (talk) 17:08, 24 January 2013 (UTC)