Talk:Robert C. Michelson

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Robert C. Michelson/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

1) Just an observation. The article has been edited by only 2 editors (with one edit by 3rd one), it has no discussion history, and was GA nominated by an IP. Not a good start.

2) "The lead is too short" - yes, I hear it myself in my GANs and I hate to hear it, but I can't help here - it is indeed short even by my measures and doesn't tell enough of what is written on this page.

3) The article is too short and often reads as an unconnected collection of achievements. The situation is not catastrophical, but certainly under GA level. The proposed way to fix it is to expand on key inventions; make mini-stories out of them (with pictures), even if they are described in full elsewhere; also, to add transition sentences wherever necessary to create a smooth story.

3) "Michelson was born in Washington D.C. (1951) and is a descendant of Christian Michelsen, the first Prime Minister of Norway." - a significant claim, thus a reference is anticipated.

4) "He has been a visiting technology professor in five nations: Australia, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, and Turkey" - insufficient referencing to this claim too.

5) "He is the author of over 78 major reports and publications." is unclear. What is "major" here ? What kind of publications, refereed journals, etc. ?

6) "Avocation summary" should be deleted or reformulated into a smooth text, rather than itemized list, selecting only few topics (perhaps 1-5).

As it stands, or after minor fixes, the article will not pass. I am putting it on hold for a week hoping for major rewriting.NIMSoffice (talk) 04:53, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

1) Just an observation. The article has been edited by only 2 editors (with one edit by 3rd one), it has no discussion history, and was GA nominated by an IP. Not a good start.

Not sure a bio for a living person can ever be a GA. I have looked through the bios of many other scientists and engineers on Wikipedia and have yet to find one that is classified as a GA (are there any?). I have taken a shot at addressing the comments below with CE to the original and would welcome any other editors with background on the article subject to join in.

2) "The lead is too short" - yes, I hear it myself in my GANs and I hate to hear it, but I can't help here - it is indeed short even by my measures and doesn't tell enough of what is written on this page.

I have expanded the summary, but already another editor has shorted it a bit. Maybe its the right length and detailed enough now.

3) The article is too short and often reads as an unconnected collection of achievements. The situation is not catastrophical, but certainly under GA level. The proposed way to fix it is to expand on key inventions; make mini-stories out of them (with pictures), even if they are described in full elsewhere; also, to add transition sentences wherever necessary to create a smooth story.

All of the "lists" have been converted to narrative text (with the exception of the list of patents, which I believe is appropriate as a list)

4) "Michelson was born in Washington D.C. (1951) and is a descendant of Christian Michelsen, the first Prime Minister of Norway." - a significant claim, thus a reference is anticipated.

WIthout getting way off topic by going into genealogical listings, a reference has been provided from literature and the section expended to discuss origins briefly. A cogent photograph has also been added to bolster the section.

5) "He has been a visiting technology professor in five nations: Australia, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, and Turkey" - insufficient referencing to this claim too.

Some references are already provided in the section regarding the von Karman Institute (Belgium), the Hava Harp Okulu (Turkey), and reference to teaching in Sweden is made in another section. Finding something published to document Australia and Norway will take more digging, but as it stands, the summary statement is of merit. Dates have been added. Because these are disparate events, there will be no single place where this statement can be referenced, and I fear that it would become a series of "rabbit trails" to spend too much text explaining each one.

6) "He is the author of over 78 major reports and publications." is unclear. What is "major" here ? What kind of publications, refereed journals, etc. ?

The nature of the publications has now been identified specifically, and a number of examples (in list form) have been provided to give the reader a feeling for the diversity of topics published as well as the nature of the publication (journal/book chapter/report)

7) "Avocation summary" should be deleted or reformulated into a smooth text, rather than itemized list, selecting only few topics (perhaps 1-5).

The number of items in this section has been reduced, and the remaining ones have been turned into narrative with topic headings. Cogent photographs have also been included to add balance with the other sections having photos.

 ⁃ Firewall 16:03, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

The article clearly got better, but there are remaining issues, e.g. references are not right, but I'll write on this later and shall leave what I have for now:

7) Lead (of a Good Article) is a summary. With rare exceptions, it should not contain references (i.e. the lead sentences should be expanded in the text and this is where the references should be)

All refs removed from lead and body of article expanded in the topic areas of these references  ⁃ Firewall 22:06, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

8) Define or spell out RTA

Done  ⁃ Firewall 22:06, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

9) I advise removing all trivial details. Suggestions for deletion:

• "He is now in private industry as an engineering consultant" (delete or move into the article)

Done  ⁃ Firewall 22:06, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

• "where he met and married Evelyn who was also employed by the FAS."

Removed  ⁃ Firewall 22:06, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

• I see the purpose of early trivia in this article as merely to show the relevant interests, as briefly as possible - not to sum up all activities. The rocket part is clearly relevant. The scouting part should go from "early life" - the "Scouting" subsection under "Avocations" is sufficient. My advice is to let go the hurdling part too.

Hurdle ref dropped, Scouting moved by expanding topic under "Avocations". Amateur rocketry left in place.  ⁃ Firewall 22:06, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

• References 12-15 should be compressed into one and placed only once (end of "early life").

refs rearranged  ⁃ Firewall 22:06, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

10) "Project director" seems most interesting part to me, and improving it would only make article better. Your ideas are welcome here. I would note that the objects shown in 2 pictures there are not self evident and are not mentioned in the text. If they are they interesting enough why not explaining them. If not, would it possible to replace them with more interesting ones?

Topics have been expanded in some places to more fully discuss items listed. Now the terms used more directly reference the wording found in the picture captions. The picture captions have also be edited to related back the "Project director" section discussion in a more identifiable way.  ⁃ Firewall 22:06, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

NIMSoffice (talk) 11:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

11) "This system developed by Michelson's design team remained in use by a foreign power for nearly a decade." - any specifics on "foreign power" ? Materialscientist (talk) 05:03, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I am going to pass this GAN despite past COI comments, because this article is well written, neutral, stable and surprisingly well referenced for WP:BLP. There were problems with the content and references, but they were fixed in the review process. I believe this article can give an example (perhaps not the best but modest) on how to compose biographies of living people. I am going to wait a bit for the author checking 11) and my copyedit and for possible comments by other editors. I would remind the author that he should settle the previously discussed copyright issues and keep in mind that GAs are being regularly evaluated. The standards are only getting higher and delistings of old GAs are common. Materialscientist (talk) 05:03, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

11 best left as is. All other CE looks fine. OTRS has been contacted by E-MAIL with copyright info and use release from author. OTRS notices have been placed on all new images.  ⁃ Firewall 01:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

References

I apologize for breaking the rules and writing a the top - just to merge it with the review comments for a while. One of the problems I haven't solved, regarding the references of this article, is mirror sites. Is it really important to keep the mirror sites ? If yes then I haven't figure out yet a technical way to put main and mirror url into one reference. The present methods (splitting up refs in two or squeezing the mirror into a wrong tag) will not do. NIMSoffice (talk) 11:49, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The mirror sites aren't really necessary since the primary sites are authoritative and are maintained by the publishing agency, but I thought that a higher degree of link stability could be had if mirror sites for obscure publications could be provided. In the event that a link breaks, Wikipedia readers would have a second chance to get to the reference. In fact, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea if there were a template that had "mirror" as an option which allowed the reader to click on the word "mirror" rather than having to display the entire mirrored URL. Just a thought (if someone knows how to write wiki templates). ⁃ Firewall 16:37, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I did understand and appreciate that, but haven't found a solution. I reformatted and moved down the patents. The only reason why I used an odd "cite web" template was to preserve the information; if url link is unnecessary, please reformat into Template:US patent reference.NIMSoffice (talk) 00:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Not sure digging through all of the references to find the patents makes things more readable, but if this is felt to enhance the article format, I'm OK with it. The URL links to the patent office are certainly not necessary as patents are self-referencing, but the URLs were included for the convenience of the Wikipedia reader who may want to see the patent without having to do a search, thereby enhancing the useability of the article for research.  ⁃ Firewall 06:24, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I've reformatted and shifted patents. Regarding mirror sites, after updating the text (which will remove some references), if no better idea comes out, please (i) reformat mirror document links in the way of ref.[1]; for non-document links (if any), just delete the mirror sites. Please keep in mind that some editor see conflict of interest in your editing this article. Thus please do avoid sentences or links which can be treated as self promotion. Best regards.NIMSoffice (talk) 06:42, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the article is rather balanced from a POV standpoint- mainly historical facts that are referenced. Unless other editors do so, I plan to add little or no new material. Mainly, I will try to find more obscure reference citations with the (probably impossible) goal that every statement is credibly cited. The entire point of this exercise and the incredible amount of background research that I've had to do to find all of these references, is to see if we can make a bio of a living person "GA". As mentioned above, I've yet to find one on Wikipedia (though I'm sure there must be a few). I am more apt to prune than add at this point. Promotion is not the goal, "GA" is, otherwise I would have left what was a stable bio alone. Your help so far is greatly appreciated.  ⁃ Firewall 07:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

There aren't enough BLP GAs, although I've worked on a few - the simple problem with source availability holds most back. Subjects with greater notability draw more sources, of course, but they also draw more controversy (of the Wikipedia sort) and so can be harder to stabilize and refine. Nathan ^T 14:04, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I would not hunt for references just to have more of them. Certainly, obvious drawbacks should be fixed, and some are still in the list above. If you are partial to references (I often am) you can provide links (preferably doi) to your publications.NIMSoffice (talk) 07:19, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

trimming

A good lede should not be too short -- but it should summarize and not include every fact in the article. There is a lot of unimportant "stuff" here, and the lede was getting a tad filled with material not essential to it. Collect (talk) 14:20, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Proficiency

Might we have a cite for a claim of "proficiency" in Spanish and Turkish? It can cover a vast range, and without a cite we do not know whether it means he can hold a rapid conversation in the languages, or whether it mean he can read the local tabloid newspaper, or just that he knows how to ask the time. All are values of "proficiency" last I checked. I figured "studied" meant he could operate at a normal college level course in the language. Proficiency does not require any studying, depending on how proficient you mean. Collect (talk) 16:40, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

The connotation of "study" is that one is attempting to learn something and is making an effort to do so, but it does not imply that the subject studied has or ever will be mastered to any degree. That is why I suggest that "proficiency" is a better word to describe the level of ability with regard to a given endeavor. This is all very subjective, but to say that someone is "studying something" is probably not relevant to a Wikipedia article. We are all studying something at various times and with varied results. To say that one is "proficient at something" imparts information to the Wikipedia reader that there is some substance or reasonable skill level to the personal being referenced. As you say, a measure of one's proficiency is not easily quantified in print unless it can be related to a grade level (for example, he completed a four year college course in xxx). In the case of languages, many are self-taught, and yet one can be not just proficient, but fluent. ⁃ Firewall 17:20, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Either way, it still needs a citation. I'd also like to see references for the two paragraphs in "Early life" - I suspect that it will be difficult to verify his status as a boyscout etc. While that information isn't uninteresting, it isn't crucial to a biography and should probably be removed if it can't be cited. Nathan ^T 18:26, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Working on it... publications about such things are difficult to find and of course people did not make web references in that era.  ⁃ Firewall 16:37, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Image copyrights

I'm concerned about the copyright status of the images on this article. For the infobox image, it is asserted that the image was intentionally posted without a copyright - but this is not equivalent to releasing it under a Creative Commons license, and generally speaking when no copyright is stated we infer "All rights reserved" as opposed to "Public domain."

Additionally, it seems somewhat dubious that User:Firewall was present at multiple stages of the life of the subject and took each photograph; the most likely conclusion is that the user is the subject himself, which as fine as far as it goes - but for copyright purposes, it indicates that the user doesn't have standing to claim ownership of these images. Can the provenance of the images be addressed, please? Thanks, Nathan ^T 18:43, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

(Should note that I don't intend the above message to be antagonistic; while we generally discourage notable individuals from actually writing their own biography, it isn't prohibited... And we certainly need and appreciate the presence of subject matter experts on Wikipedia! The more the better. Nonetheless, certain issues still need to be addressed.) Nathan ^T 18:45, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

No problem. Should it not be expected that parents or siblings would have pictures of sons/daughters/brothers/sisters throughout their life time? I think rather than being "dubious", that should be "expected". But as pointed out, individuals can also have photos of themselves which are not available through any other source (making them subject matter experts in terms of access to pictorial information). The original images used in this article are all taken by or taken at the request of User:Firewall and are released into the public domain for use in Wikipedia and other web sites. User:Firewall owns all of the images and as indicated on the copyright pages, releases them. The infobox image is a promotional image that had already been released into the public domain. Perhaps the description is not sufficiently worded because "this photo is intentionally provided without copyright" was intended to convey the fact that no rights are claimed and that it was already in the public domain. As a promotional photo, it is hoped that it is distributed as widely as possible in conjunction with discussions of the Entomopter. I'll change the copyright notice to something more acceptable if that is possible once the picture has been placed (is that possible?)  ⁃ Firewall 21:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If you can have the website where the image is originally found place a copyright notice releasing it under a compatible license (GFDL 1.3 until June 30, I think, and then CC-by-SA 3.0 afterwards, or PD) that would be ideal. As for images taken by others... Sure, family members can be expected to have taken photographs of an individual over a lifetime. Even so, the license to those photographs is owned by the photographer - not the subject. I'll ask an images admin to come by and give an opinion on whether the assertion that the images are currently owned by you is sufficient - it may be, for our purposes, I'm not sure. Nathan ^T 14:01, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Some of these photos are scanned from the original and do not exist at web sites, so adding copyright notices is not applicable in those cases (for example the picture taken at the Chr. Michelson Institute). Regarding the license to photographs being owned by the one who pushes the shutter button, I do not think that that is entirely true. For example, in copyright law, "works for hire" belong not to the photographer, but to the one commissioning the photograph. In the case of family photos, a child directed to snap a picture of a parent does not have rights to the photograph if the child is commanded to take the picture with the parent's camera as a familial duty (a sort of "work for hire"). I am familiar with the process of getting written permission from the owner of photographs sent to "Wikipedia OTRS permissions" as I have done that with the John Portman (architect) picture on Wikipedia. In the case of the pictures in this article however, the highest resolution and paper originals are all owned by User:Firewall as indicated in the release statements. After we have stabilized the text of the article (so that none of the pictures change), I'll be happy to send the OTRS folks an E-MAIL confirming this, but it will be redundant with the certification on the picture itself.  ⁃ Firewall 00:43, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok. OTRS confirmation was the route I was told to suggest, so that works fine for me. Nathan ^T 15:16, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Removal of section subheadings and part of the lead

First of all, I do appreciate that (copy)edit, but would like to discuss the above issues. (i) IMHO, subheadings only clarify the content, even though the paragraphs are small (besides, they might expand, who knows) and this opinion is widely shared in scientific publishing. Why removing ? (ii) What was the reason for cutting that sentence off the lead ? I foresee a future GA delisting on the famous ground "the lead is too short". Consequently, I shall not pass this GAN like that and shall ask the author to expand the lead, to which he might ask the same question - what was wrong with the previous ? Materialscientist (talk) 22:38, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I have now seen a number of peer reviews and the like -- and to a one they all say that where a section is a short paragraph at most, and you have a whole bunch of them, that it is best to not have separate section headings for each. The aim is to make the article easier to read, and having lots of minor headings can rather confuse people. "During his career, he concentrated on application of remote sensing (especially radar) to diverse fields ranging from the tracking of endangered species to automated wargaming, threat systems, and eventually focusing on unmanned vehicle systems." was in the lede. The lede is supposed to be at most a summary of what one will find in the article. Finding a long sentence which is basically iterated under "career" does not meet that standard in my opinion. The information is still there under "career" - the question was it should also be given almost verbatim in the lede. I trust this answers your concerns. Collect (talk) 22:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining the edit (an important note there on current WP presentation standards). This now bounces back to the author and comment 2) of GA review - the introduction should be expanded to include a summary of the major topics of the paper. Materialscientist (talk) 23:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The lead has been (re) expanded to come closer to what I think the GA standards are looking for. This time the topics included are summary statements covering all of the sections found in the article. Expanded discussion of these summary statements are found in the body with appropriate citations, but for reader convenience (for those only scanning the introduction) I have "wikified" various words/phrases/names even though some of these are also "wikified" in the body of the article.  ⁃ Firewall 01:32, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

Has it ever been noted that this article was created and heavily edited by the subject of the article? I'm referring to his edit at [1] which seems to claim that he is Michelson. Dougweller (talk) 17:36, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

A quick answer, yes, this fact has long been known and discussed. The author was guided to keep NPOV to the best of their ability. Materialscientist (talk) 00:06, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

It has been known, but I don't see where it has ever been discussed. I tagged it with {{COI}} about 9 months ago here, but it was remove here with nary an acknowledgement of the issue. Being NPOV is not the same as being conflict-free. If User:Firewall is indeed Robert C. Michelson, I believe the tag is certainly warranted. IMHO, having an untagged article with such a conflicted editor hurts Wikipedia's credibility. It doesn't help that the article was created by the subject himself, has been extensively edited by the subject himself, and was promoted to GA status largely by the efforts of the subject himself. This is basically an autobiography, and such articles are "strongly discouraged". --Evb-wiki (talk) 02:34, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I've tagged it for the sake of transparency and honesty. I agree with Evb-wiki. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 17:21, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

After carefully reading this article, I can not say that I see any hint of conflict of interest. Everyting is very well documented with relevant citations. It seems to me the article simply state biographical facts for a person that is clearly notable. In no way do I see that this article "hurts Wikipedia's credibility".Pulsopapel (talk) 00:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

COI is not about how well written the article is, or how well sourced. Please read WP:CONFLICT. The fact is, this article should actually be tagged with {{autobio}}. --Evb-wiki (talk) 01:31, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, the abundance of footnotes in the article is misleading. About one-third of them are primary sources, i.e., articles, papers, books written by Michelson himself, which must be used with care. Here they are usually being used (over-used, IMHO) to support the claims of the subject's specific accomplishments. --Evb-wiki (talk) 01:43, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

It has far too much detail - reads more like a CV than an encyclopedia article. For instance, it seems to list every course he taught. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 11:42, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Cleanup needed

I placed several cleanup tags on the article addressing by biggest concerns regarding the state of this article in hopes that it will attract the attention of multiple editors. I don't particularly feel that at the moment this article meets the standards of a Good Article, but instead of delisting it or putting it up for reassessment right away (or at all), I thought I'd point out my biggest concerns informally first.

• Reference placement: The placement of references needs some serious cleanup to improve readability. There really isn't a tag for that, but it is related to the Manual of Style. Citations should not be in the middle of sentences. They come after end-of-sentence punctuation. Any sentence that makes a claim of fact should have a citation, even if the same citation was just used. There are large swaths of text without citations, including the lead, which the MOS now requires to be cited.

• Source quality/neutrality: I noticed that there are several sources that list the subject of the article as an author. Even if they are published in a refereed third-party source, I have concerns about some of the statements in the article having only those sources as references. It sets in a bit of a grey-area policy-wise, so my recommendation is to shore up some of those references with sources that are not (co)authored by the article's subject. If it's that important, someone else will have mentioned it somewhere.

• Undue weight: I have concerns that the length and detail that this article goes into is a little much for the summary format of an encyclopedia. In particular, the "In popular media" section could stand to be pared down to the most significant two or three items. Likewise, the "Avocations" section could probably benefit from the same.

• Reads like a resume: This article has a lot of chronological laundry lists that read very much like expanded versions of resume bullet points. Consider picking and choosing from these or organizing the prose in an alternate way.

• Puffery: Considering that the main contributor to the article is the subject of the article, the prose is generally pretty neutral. However, there are some instances of puffery and weasel words throughout the article.

I may try to go through the article later and clean up some of these things myself if I have time. But I figured I'd leave this here for the benefit of other editors. LaMenta3 (talk) 05:49, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

File:MichelsonInvention.jpg Nominated for Deletion

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COI tag (March 2024)

Author Firewall appears to have admitted to a COI here without formally disclosing per WP:DISCLOSE. ThaddeusSholto (talk) 21:29, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

@ThaddeusSholto: Since this is a good article, would you be willing to bring these concerns to WP:GAR where editors can assess the autobiography concerns? I think you will be able to explain this better than I can. Z1720 (talk) 19:08, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

Robert C. Michelson

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delisted. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:23, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

The GA nominator had a conflict of interest with the article, which I do not think was disclosed at the time. This resulted in an orange banner with COI concerns. There is also an orange banner with a resume concern. I also do not think the article has been updated with more recent information for his bio. Z1720 (talk) 18:17, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.